PRINCETON,    N.    J. 


'%/>> 


BV  3777  .E5  H66  1884        ^ 
Hopkins,  Ellice,  1836-1904. 
Work  amongst  working  men  . . 


S/ie// 


^ 


* 


WORK  AMONGST  WORKING  MEN 


PRESS     NOTICES    OF    PREVIOUS 
EDITIONS. 

"  In  her  biography  of  James  Hinton,  Miss  Hopkins 
proved  that  she  possessed  wide  tolerance  and  high 
culture.  The  book  before  us  shows  that  she  has 
also  an  aptitude  for  that  practical  work  among  the 
poor  in  which  less  gifted  women  are  often  so  suc- 
cessful. She  has  great  sympathy  with  the  poor, 
and  understands,  as  those  only  can  who  have  lived 
among  them,  their  special  trials  and  difficulties." 
—Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"  Miss  Hopkins'  book  is  not  exclusively  concerned 
with  her  own  work.  It  contains  many  valuable  sug- 
gestions upon  other  matters  connected  with  the  class 
for  which  she  has  done  so  much ;  and  we  advise 
all  who  are  interested  in  the  poor  to  read  it  for 
themselves." — Spectator. 


t>f'■'^^^ 


WORK     l^M&$^i^ 
WORKING   MEN 


By  ELLICE*  HOPKINS 

AUTHOR    OF    '  LIFE    AND    LETTERS   OF    JAMES   HINTON  '     'WORK   IN 
BRIGHTON,'    ETC. 


F/FTff  EDITION 


NEW    YORK 
THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  2  &  3  BIBLE  HOUSE 

1884 


V9 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.    MY    FIRST   VENTURE I 

II.    MY    FIRST    CONVERTS 1 6 

III.    INTELLECTUAL    GOSPELS   AND    THE    PEOPLE           .  3 1 

IV.    MEN   AND    WOMEN 46 

V.    EVANGELIZATION 67^ 

VI.    SOCIAL   DIFFICULTIES 97 

VIL    THE   SAVINGS    QUESTION 1 38 

VIII.    OVERCROWDING         .           .           ,            e           .            .  169 

IX.    CONCLUSION 174 


CHAPTER  L 

MY  FIRST 'iTENXiBRE. 


.ELIGION      is      all 

women ; '  from  my  earliest  years 
I  have  detested  that  maxim  of  the 
great  Emperor's.  From  a  child  I  always 
counted  the  bare  heads  in  church,  and  esti- 
mated the  preacher's  power  according  to  their 
number.  From  a  girl  I  had  the  strongest 
conviction  that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  was  essen- 
tially for  men ;  and  that  only  so  far  as  a  man  is 
in  Christ  and  like  Christ  can  he  be  really  a  man. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  no  small  dissatis- 
faction and  pain  that  I  was  constantly  hearing 
from  a  number  of  respectable  girls  of  my 
own  age,  whom  I  had  gathered  into  a  Bible- 
class  at  my  own  house,  that  their  fathers  and 
brothers,  as  a  rule,  went  to  no  place  of  worship. 


\l 


J^: 


2  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN. 

Skirting  one  of  the  Universities  is  a  large 
and  populous  suburb  where  the  mass  of  the 
working  people  live,  and  which  from  time 
immemorial  had  borne  a  most  unenviable 
character.  I  fear  it  was  a  practical  comment 
on  the  truth  of  that  uncomfortable  proverb, 
'  The  nearer  the  church,  the  farther  from  God,* 
that  so  bad  a  district  should  adjoin  one  of 
the  great  head-quarters  of  the  Church.  I  can 
myself  remember  the  time  when  it  was  not 
considered  safe,  or  proper,  for  a  lady  to  pene- 
trate its  recesses  alone.  On  one  occasion  my 
mother,  having  to  make  some  business  in- 
quiries, asked  a  man  who  was  standing  in  one 
of  the  main  streets  to  direct  her  to  a  certain 
'  Gas  Lane.'  *  Yau'U  find  it  on  your  right/ 
he  replied ;  '  but  it*s  a  rum  lot  you  are  going 
among,  old  lady,'  he  added,  with  an  uncom- 
fortable stress  on  the  pronoun,  which  is  felt 
in  circumstances  of  dubious  peril  to  appeal 
forcibly  to  the  imagination. 

But  having  made  up  my  mind  to  see  if 
something  could  not  be  done  to  influence  men 
as  well   as   girls,   it   was    this    suburb,   with    its 


MY  FIRST  VENTURE.  3 

lawless  population  of  roughs,  that  I  chose  as 
the  sphere  of  my  efforts.  Youthful  heroism, 
when  combined  with  Christianity,  even  though 
it  can  no  longer  culminate  in  a  St.  Theresa, 
has  still  some  few  outlets  left  in  these  degene- 
rate days,  and  is  not  quite  reduced  to  the 
melancholy  career  our  great  novelist,  George 
Eliot,  accords  it,  as  summed  up  in  Miss  Nightin- 
gale's words,  *of  first  marrying  an  elderly 
literary  impostor,  and  then  quick  after  him, 
an  inferior  sort  of  faun/ 

Accordingly,  one  Tuesday  evening  at  half- 
past  five,  I  found  myself  seated  in  a  cottage 
•vith  sixteen  men.  Two  or  three  of  the  district 
visitors,  who  had  attended  my  Bible  classes, 
had  set  to  work  with  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
only  women  can  work,  and,  by  dint  of  season- 
ing all  their  meals  and  part  of  their  evening 
with  my  praises,  had  at  last  persuaded  this 
limited  number,  with  great  difficulty,  to  come 
and  hear  me  for  themselves. 

I  suppose  there  is  something  essentially  touch- 
ing in  a  woman's  speaking.  I  have  rarely  heard 
a  woman  speak  but    I    have    felt  a  strong   un- 


4  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

reasoning  impulse  to  tears.  '  I  cried  like  a  calf/ 
CJ'ai  pleure  comme  un  veau/)  said  a  leading 
Protestant  in  France,  on  hearing  a  lady  friend 
of  mine  address  some  of  the  Paris  chiffoniers  in 
their  own  language;  and  the  friend  who  went 
with  me  to  my  first  meetings  used  laughingly 
to  declare  that  she  always  took  with  her  a 
large  white  pocket-handkerchief  and  spread  it 
out  on  her  knees,  ready  for  instant  action  the 
moment  I  began.  Perhaps  it  is  that  the  woman's 
voice  keeps  so  many  tender  home-tones,  and 
has  never  been  hoarsened  at  elections,  nor  in 
political  meetings,  nor  in  the  streets,  but  is  like 
an  instrument  on  which  only  loving  hands 
have  played,  and  all  our  mother  pleads  with 
us  in  its  gentleness.  Certain  it  is,  there  were 
few  dry  eyes  in  that  cottage  on  that  Sunday 
evening. 

I  soon  found  out,  however,  that  they  did  not 
like  coming  to  a  private  cottage;  so,  as  my  clergy- 
man was  as  anxious  as  I  was  for  the  success 
of  the  experiment,  I  decided  to  move  at  once 
into  his  schoolrooms. 

The   following   Sunday,  rather  to   my  dismay, 


MV  FIRST  VENTURE.  5 

I  found  the  small  room,  which  I  had  considered 
large  enough  to  accommodate  my  audience,  full 
to  overflowing,  and  many  men  were  obliged  to 
stand  and  listen  outside.  After  the  address  was 
over,  I  went  up  to  one  of  my  first  hearers  and 
expressed  my  regret  that  he  had  not  been  able 
to  get  into  the  room,  adding  that  we  would 
meet  in  a  larger  room  next  time,  when  I  hoped 
he  would  be  able  to  hear.  *  Oh,  thank  you, 
Miss,  I  heard  your  'scourse  quite  well  through 
the  door,'  he  exclaimed,  enthusiastically.  From 
which  time  we  concluded  that  '  'scourse '  must  be 
the  feminine  of  discourse,  a  point  of  English 
grammar  which  Murray  has  failed  to  notice, 
owing,  doubtless,  to  female  speakers  scarcely 
existing  in  his  days,  or,  at  least,  being 
still  subject  to  Dr.  Johnson's  opprobrious 
remark,  *  Sir,  a  woman  preaching  is  like 
a  dog  standing  on  its  hind  legs ;  the  thing  is 
not  well  done,  but  the  wonder  is  it  can  be  done 
at  all.' 

Seeing  that  the  work  was  likely  to  outgrow 
my  single-handed  powers,  I  made  my  first  effort 
to  organize  my  meeting,  and  asked  two  or  three 


)^ 


6  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

Sunday-school  teachers  to  work  with  me.  At 
first  their  work  was  chiefly  to  find  out  the 
worst  characters  and  bring  them  to  the  meet- 
ing. One  dapper  little  man,  a  Mr.  B.,  was 
greatly  delighted  at  my  asking  him  to  work 
with  me,  and  promised  he  would  do  his  best 
at  my  very  next,  meeting. 

The  next  Sunday,  the  friend  who  always 
went  with  mt  being  ill,  I  started  off  alone, 
adding  to,  rather  than  lessening,  my  alarm  by 
calling  for  a  working-man  on  the  way.  This 
man  I  knew  had  resisted  all  efforts  to  get  him 
inside  a  place  of  worship,  or,  alas !  but  too 
often,  outside  a  public-house.  But  I  had 
reached  that  convenient  stage  of  terror  which 
turns  the  corner  and  rounds  upon  courage, 
and  felt  perfectly  reckless  what  became  of  me- 
Brought  up,  as  I  had  been,  in  all  the  refined 
and  intellectual  life  of  an  University,  which,  I 
sometimes  think,  more  than  any  other  separates 
one  from  the  life  of  the  people,  I  doubt  whether 
at  that  time  a  sheeted  spectre  had  the  same 
unknown  terrors  for  me  as  a  rough  in  the  *  too* 
too  solid  flesh.'    And   I   knew  that  many  were 


MY  FIRST  VENTURE,  7 

beginning  to  look  grave,  and  question  whether 
it  was  safe  for  a  young  lady  to  gather  together 
a  mass  of  lawless  men,  with  the  certainty  that, 
if  any  outbreak  took  place,  she  would  be 
powerless  to  control  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
what  was  most  evident  to  me  was,  that  these 
men  would  come  to  me  on  the  Sundays,  and, 
as  had  been  too  well  proved,  would  not  go  to 
any  church  or  chapel.  One  other  lady  besides 
myself,  a  young  clergyman's  wife,  had  succeeded 
lately  in  getting  together  a  certain  number  on 
a  week-night, — her  Sundays  being  fully  engaged, 
— and  was  doing  good  work  among  them.  But 
the  worst  men,  the  men  who  most  want  some 
humanizing  influence,  cannot  be  got  to  week- 
day meetings,  they  are  too  tired  after  their 
work  to  make  the  effort  to  come  to  what  pre- 
sents no  attraction  to  them ;  while  on  the 
Sunday  time  hangs  heavy  on  their  hands,  and 
to  go  to  a  meeting  is  a  much  less  marked  pro- 
ceeding. Their  uncared-for  souls  lay  at  my 
door,  not  at  the  doors  of  those  who  criticised 
me ;  my  clergyman,  to  whom,  if  to  any  one, 
I    owed   obedience,   urged   the   work    upon   me; 


8  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

and,  do  what  I  would,  I  could  not  shut  out  the 
duty  of  welcoming  them  in  the  name  of  Our 
Lord.  I  had  my  earthly  father's  blessing,  why 
should  I  doubt  my  heavenly  Father's  ?  If  there 
is  one  truth  I  have  grasped  more  strongly  than 
another  it  is  this :  only  be  sure  of  your  duty, 
and  there  must  be  an  infinite  store  of  force 
in  God  which  you  can  lay  hold  of  to  do  it 
with,  as  an  engineer  lays  hold  of  a  force  in 
Nature  and  drives  his  engine  right  through  the 
granite  bases  of  an  Alp.  If  you  are  sure  that 
it  is  God's  will  you  should  do  it,  then  *  I  can't ' 
must  be  a  lie  in  the  lips  that  repeat  *  I  believe 
in  the  Holy  Ghost.' 

*  So  nigh  to  grandeur  is  our  dust, 
So  nigh  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  *  Thou  must/ 
The  soul  replies,  *  I  can.' 

As  St.  Theresa  said,  in  answer  to  some  objectors, 
Avhen  she  set  about  founding  a  much  needed 
orphanage  with  only  three  halfpence  in  her 
pocket,  '  Theresa  and  three  halfpence  can  do 
nothing ;  but  God  and  three  halfpence  can  do 
all    things.'     I  was   but   the  three  halfpence,  but 


MY  FIRST  VENTURE.  9 

I  might  be  used  to  redeem  these  men  from  the 
slavery  of  sin. 

When  at  last  I  emerged  from  the  dark  street 
into  the  large  well-lighted  school-room,  a  scene 
presented  itself  which  could  only  be  witnessed 
in  our  own  country,  or  that  other  great  English- 
speaking  land,  America.  The  room  was  full  of 
wild,  rough  men,  some  of  them  desperate 
characters  enough,  men  who  had  never  been 
known  to  come  together  in  large  numbers  with- 
out some  row  taking  place.  I  was  the  only 
woman  in  the  room,  entirely  at  their  mercy, 
a  mere  inexperienced  girl  with  the  love  of  her 
Saviour  at  her  heart,  and  wishful  of  saving 
others,  but  with  nothing  to  oppose  to  their  wild 
lawless  strength  but  the  invincible  weakness 
of  the  divine.  Yet  nothing  could  be  more 
orderly  and  devout  than  the  simple  service  we 
held  together,  and  when  it  was  over,  and  they 
crowded  around  me  to  shake  hands  with  me, 
and  thank  me,  my  own  brothers  could  not  have 
been  more  reverent  and  careful  of  me  than  these 
rough  men. 

As  soon  as   he    could    get   at  me,  my  dapper 


10  ,  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

little  Sunday-school  teacher  bustled  up  to  me, 
and  exclaimed,  with  a  glow  of  self-satisfaction, 
'  I  think  I  may  say  I  was  successful  in  my  first 
endeavours  in  your  cause,  Miss.  I  brought  you 
seven  men, — all  drunk,'  he  added,  with  a  touch 
of  gentle  pride,  in  remembrance  of  my  injunc- 
tion to  get  th€  worst.  And  sure  enough  he  had 
picked  them  out  of  a  neighbouring  public- 
house,  and  shored  them  up  one  after  the  other 
on  a  bench  in  a  row,  spending  some  hours  and 
much'  patient  ingenuity  in  this  unprofitable 
task.  Fortunately  they  did  not  tumble  back- 
wards, nor,  like  Cassio,  take  to  talking  fustian 
with  their  own  shadow,  nor  in  any  other  way 
disturb  the  meeting ;  enough  of  the  man  still 
being  left  in  those  seven  beer  barrels  to  make 
them  feel  thoroughly  ashamed  of  themselves. 
But  they  always  went  by  the  name  of  *  little 
Mr.  B's.  first  contribution.* 

From  the  Sunday  of  my  escape  from  the 
seven  drunken  men,  my  rough  congregation 
increased  a  hundred  or  so  at  a  time.  At  first 
I  was  for  limiting  the  meeting  to  one  large 
room,    but    my    clergyman,    delighted     that    the 


MV  FIRST   VENTURE.  ii 

men  of  his  parish  could  be  got  to  hear  the 
gospel,  whether  from  man  or  woman,  took  the 
matter  into  his  own  hands,  and  flung  open  the 
folding-doors  that  separated  the  two  large 
school-rooms,  and  both  rapidly  filled.  As  the 
fame  of  the  meeting  spread,  men  used  to  come 
streaming  in  from  the  villages  round,  some 
walking  ten  or  twelve  miles,  till  at  last  they 
stood  packed  as  close  as  herrings  in  a  barrel, 
from  five  to  six  hundred  being  crammed  into 
a  space  meant  for  not  much  more  than  half 
that  number.  Most  singular  was  the  scene  pre- 
sented by  the  broad  road  leading  to  the  Abbey 
school-rooms  at  half-past  five,  when  the  women- 
folk were  mostly  in-doors  at  tea;  nothing  but 
the  heavy  tramp  J  tramp !  of  men  being  heard, 
all  converging  to  one  spot. 

After  a  few  brief  struggles  I  had  overcome 
the  great  clothes  difficulty.  On  the  point  of 
getting  men  to  be  content  to  go  to  heaven  in 
their  old  jackets,  my  heart  was  much  set.  On 
one  occasion  I  asked  the  mother  of  a  grown- 
up son  why  he  never  came.  She  replied,  '  He'd 
like  to  come^  Miss^  but  he's   no  trousers.'  '  *But 


12  WO-RK  AMONG    WORKING-MEN. 

I  don't  want  his  trousers ;  I  want  him !  * 
I  exclaimed,  with  an  apparent  fine  indifference 
as  to  whether  he  came  with  or  without  those 
indispensable  habiliments,  which  sorely  tried 
my  companion's  gravity. 

But  soon,  as  the  meeting  was  only  for  men, 
it  became  a  sort  of  rough  fashion  to  attend  it. 
Mr.  Darwin  tells  us  that  male  birds  have  their 
bright  plumage  for  the  sole  purpose  of  attract- 
ing the  more  dowdily-clad  female.  Certainly 
I  found  it  so  at  my  meeting.  Their  wives  and 
sweethearts  were  not  there  to  look  at  them, 
and  the  crowd  was  too  great  for  me  to  see 
them,  so  they  used  to  come  in  their  working 
dress,  and  even  sometimes  in  their  shirt-sleeves. 
One  old  drunkard,  however,  used  regularly  to 
pay  sixpence  to  get  his  clothes  out  of  pawn  on 
Saturday  night,  and  regularly  return  them  to 
durance  vile  as  soon  as  the  meeting  was  over. 

But  what  a  work  it  was!  Truly,  I  had 
need  of  a  strong  faith  in  God,  for  my  diffi- 
culties were  great.  In  the  first  place,  I  knew 
that,  young  as  I  was,  if  once  undergraduates 
were  to  take  to  coming  to    the  meeting,  it  must 


MV  FIRST  VENTURE.  I^ 

come  to  an  untimely  end.  On  one  occasion  I 
espied  one  among  the  crowd,  and,  walking  up 
to  him,  as  courteously  as  I  could  I  publicly 
turned  him  out;  but  another,  seeing  what  I  was^ 
after,  deftly  whipped  off  his  gown  while  my ' 
back  was  turned,  and  sat  upon  it,  and  so  com- 
pletely baffled  me.  But  my  wishes  having  been 
thus  strongly  expressed,  and  the  suburb  being 
some  little  distance  from  the  University,  that 
peril  soon  came  to  an  end ;  though  to  the  last 
I  was  often  amused  by  the  wildest  reports  that 
had  reached  some  distant  friend, — how  forty 
undergraduates  had,  on  one  occasion,  come  to 
mock,  but  remained  to  pray,  etc.,  which,  in  a 
Dissenting  organ,  was  magnified  into  a  hope 
that  I  might  '  prove  the  feeble  instrument  of 
bringing  a  knowledge  of  saving  grace  to  a 
godless  and  unbelieving  University.'  The  idea 
of  that  awful  functionary,  the  Vice-Chancellor  of 
the  University,  accompanied  by  his  beadles 
and  *  bull-dogs,'  attending  the  Abbey  school 
meeting,  held  by  a  young  lady  in  that  tabooed 
suburb,  is  one  the  wild  profanity  of  which  it 
requires    a    university-bred    mind    to   appreciate. 


14  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

But  a  far  greater  difficulty  lay  in  the  character 
of  the  men  I  had  to  deal  with.  With  large 
numbers  I  was  their  only  influence  for  good, 
the  only  voice  that  spoke  to  them  of  God  and 
Christ.  Out  at  their  work  all  day,  many  ot 
them  never  saw  a  clergyman  or  a  district  visitor. 
A  good  many  came  from  sheer  curiosity,  and 
if  I  failed  to  make  any  impression  on  them 
I  knew  not  whether  the  opportunity  would 
ever  come  again,  nor  what  desperate  deed  they 
might  do.  In  the  first  year  of  my  work  a 
murder  and  a  suicide  took  place  not  far  from 
the  door  of  my  school-room.  On  one  occasion 
six  men  came  from  a  neighbouring  village 
to  *  hear  the  lady  preach,'  but  as  preach- 
ing was  dry  work  in  general,  they  provided 
themselves  with  a  shilling  a-piece,  with  the 
intention  of  turning  into  a  public-house  on  their 
way  back,  and  getting  'jolly  drunk'  in  my 
honour.  I  am  thankful  to  say  that  the  word 
which  met  them  was  too  strong  for  them,  and 
they  returned  perfectly  sober  with  the  shilling 
safe  in  their  pockets.  Generally  they  took 
my  adventurous   plain-speaking  very  well.     Once 


MV  FIRST    VENTURE, 


15 


after  I  had  had  to  speak  very  plainly  of  the 
sin  and  degradation  of  some  of  their  lives,  the 
want  of  true  manliness  among  them,  two  men 
went  away  and  walked  side  by  side  without 
saying  a  word  till  they  reached  their  garden 
gates,  when  they  turned  and  faced  one  another- 
*  Bill,'  one  was  heard  to  say  to  the  other,  *  for 
the  first  time  in  my  life  I've  been  well  licked, 
and  that  by  a  woman.' 

'So  have  I — good  night,'  laconically  rejoined 
the  other,  and  bolted  into  his  house. 

But  God  only  knows  the  unnecessary  anguish 
I  went  through  lest  I  had  not  been  earnest 
enough ;  lest  some  unthought-of  word  of  mine 
uttered  more  from  the  heart  might  have  saved  my 
brother ;  tormenting  myself,  like  many  another 
young  soldier  in  the  fight,  instead  of  asking  God 
for  grace  to  do  my  best,  and  quietly  leaving 
the  issues  and  increase  with  Him. 


CHAPTER  II. 

MY  FIRST  CONVERTS. 

EANTIME  I  was  steadily  going  on 
with  the  organization  of  my  meeting, 
and  was  slowly  gathering  round  me  a 
band  of  earnest  helpers,  both  men  and  women. 
I  was  always  reminding  them  that  if  I  v/as  the 
head  they  were  the  limbs,  and  that  the  head 
without  the  hands  and  feet  would  be  helpless  ; 
so  that  they  grew  to  feel  that  the  meeting  was 
theirs  as  well  as  mine ;  and  we  all  worked  with 
a  will.  Their  part  was  not  only  to  recruit  for 
the  meeting  but  also  .to  watch  for  any  who  were 
impressed,  and  keep  them  back  for  the  after 
meeting,  and  talk  and  pray  with  them,  as  well 
as  to  visit  them  in  their  own  houses,  or  in  some 
cases  bring  them  up  to  me.  Ultimately  I  was 
joined  by  Miss  Macpherson,  since  well  known  in 


MV  FIRST  CONVERTS,  17 

connection  with   emigration,  and   found   her  most 
helpful  to  my  inexperience. 

Very  soon  one  of  my  right-hand  helpers,  a 
working-man,  who  had  stood  for  seven  years 
almost  alone  on  the  side  of  Christ  in  some 
large  brick-fields,  but  now  found  himself  a  sort 
of  spiritual  father  amongst  his  mates,  who  till 
then  had  led  him  a  life  of  constant  petty  per- 
secution, told  me  that  seven  working-men  wished 
to  lead  a  different  life,  and  would  like  me  to 
talk  and  pray  with  them.  So  they  came  up 
to  my  house,  most  of  them,  at  the  time  I  am 
writing.  Christian  men  of  more  than  ten  years 
standing,  but  then  in  the  glow  of  their  first 
faith  and  their  first  love,  with  that  simple, 
hearty,  unreserved  surrender  of  themselves  to 
God  common  to  working-men,  but  rare,  at  least 
in  its  outward  manifestations,  in  more  sophis- 
ticated ranks  of  society.  I  remember  now  one 
of  those  first  prayers  that  welled  out  of  a  full 
heart,  rude  in  language  but  deep  and  pure  in 
feeling : — '  O  Lord,  you  know  how  I  have  been 
knocked  about  in  the  world,  and  grow'd  up  in 
publics,  and  never  had  any  one  to   care  for  my 

2 


IS  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

soul,  till  our  blessed  hand-maiden  came  to  teach 
us  about  our  Saviour,  and  about  our  Father  in 
heaven.' 

Few,  indeed,  of  us  can  realize  the  rough  un- 
humanizin,g  character  of  the  lives  of  many  of 
our  working-men.  Some,  like  this  man,  had 
lost  their  mother  young.  Many  more,  alas ! 
might  as  well  ha/e  been  hatched  by  steam, 
as  far  as  any  mother's  care  and  tenderness  go, 
and  would  doubtless  have  echoed  the  young 
street  Arab's  sentiment,  'He  didn't  see  what 
good  mothers  were,  'cept  to  wallop  a  fellow.' 
And  it  is  just  this  rough,  motherless,  uncared- 
for  side  of  their  lives  which  makes  the  influence 
of  a  refined  and  educated  woman  something 
to  them  which  the  most  tender-hearted  man 
can  never  supply.  I  would  especially  urge  this 
fact  on  those  wno  object  to  a  woman  working 
among  men.  Would  that  I  could  only  think 
that  these  rough  notes,  written  vears  after  I 
have  myself  been  laid  aside  from  this  work, 
might  be  the  means  of  stirring  up  some  lady, 
young  or  old,  to  try  her  influence  over  the 
working-men    of   her    neighbourhood,   and   be   to 


MV  FIRST  CONVERTS.  19 

some  dusty,  hard-toiling  lives  Ci  gracious  dew 
from  heaven,  '  twice  blessed/  indeed ;  blessing 
her  who  gives  and  him  who  takes. 

But  my  first  prayer-meeting  had  its  very 
funny  as  well  as  its  solemn,  joyful  side.  One 
man,  with  a  strange  grotesque  gargoyle  sort  of 
face,  who  was  more  influenced  by  his  love  for 
me  than  by  the  deep  spiritual  change  that  had 
began  in  the  others,  thinking  that  he  would 
certainly  be  called  upon  to  '  make  a  prayer,' 
had  prepared  himself  beforehand  for  the  emer- 
gency. He  learned  an  oration  by  heart,  or 
rather,  in  this  instance,  I  should  say  by  head, 
and  came  into  my  presence  with  it  at  full  cock, 
warranted  to  go  off  at  the  least  notice.  So 
when  two  or  three  of  the  others  had  given 
vent  to  their  few  broken  heartfelt  utterances 
he  began  with  a  flourish  of  Jewish  trumpets, 
*0  Thou  that  dwellest  between  the  cherubims  !' 
There  was  a  dead  pause.  Then  turning  his 
queer  face  over  his  shoulder,  he  said,  with  a 
piteous  bleat  to  me,  '  Oh,  Miss,  I'm  stuck  fast, 
I  can't  get  on  ! ' 

Still  on  my  knees,  I  solemnly  answered,  '  Never 


20    .  rVOJ^JT  AMOAG   WORKING-MEN. 

mind,  my  brother,  God  will  teach  you  another 
time ; '  and  at  once  began  a  few  words  of  con- 
cluding prayer.  But  alas  for  an  unfortunately 
keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous  !  For  a  few  moments 
my  voice  quivered  and  wavered  on  the  very 
verge  of  laughter,  and  it  was  only  by  a  super- 
human effort  that  I  managed  to  control  my- 
self When  I  rose  from  my  knees  I  felt  as 
if  my  hair  must  have  turned  grey  in  the 
struggle. 

Not  many  Sundays  had  passed  before  I  noticed 
an  old  man  who  always  sat  in  the  same  place, 
and  listened  to  me  with  a  queer,  perplexed  look 
on  his  weather-beaten  face.  I  soon  ascertained 
that  he  was  popularly  known  by  the  name  of  '  Old 
Tom,'  and  was  a  well-sinker,  who  for  seventy 
years  had  led  a  wild  and  desperate  life ;  the 
hair-breadth  escapes  he  had  met  with  in  his  dan- 
gerous calling  seeming  only  to  have  hardened 
him  and  made  him  more  reckless.  Time  after 
time  he  had  been  dug  out  of  the  earth  only  to 
come  up  from  his  living  grave  to  resume  his 
wild  courses.  His  only  son  had  been  struck 
dead  before  his  eyes  on  the  line:  nothing  seemed 


MV  FIRST  CONVERTS.  21 

to  make  any  impression  on  his  hard  old 
heart.  But  as  he  sat  and  heard  for  the  first 
time  of  the  love  of  his  God ;  how  the  Father 
had  never  hardened  His  heart  against  His  lost 
child  ;  how  the  door  of  heaven  was  left  on  the 
latch  even  for  such  as  he ;  how  poor  old  Tom's 
very  place  was  kept  up  in  heaven  *  prepared 
for  him/  if  only  he  would  arise  and  come  home 
to  his  Father,  strange  thoughts  were  stirred  in 
that  dim  old  mind.  But  poor  old  Tom  had 
one  difficulty,  which  always  seemed  to  stand  in 
the  way.  '  I'm  no  scholard/  he  used  to  say  to 
himself,  scratching  his  grey  head  in  a  perplexed 
sort  of  way;  'it  ain't  no  manner  of  use,  I  don't 
know  how  to  make  a  prayer.' 

At  last  he  heard  me  give  an  account  of  how 
a  working-man  they  all  knew  and  respected 
came  to  be  what  he  was.  He  was  once  a  farm- 
servant  in  a  Christian  family,  when  the  mother 
of  the  house  died  quite  suddenly.  The  father 
sent  for  his  two  sons ;  and  when  they  met, 
they  fell  on  one  another's  necks  and  .wept,  and 
comforted  one  another  with  the  words  of  ever- 
lasting   life.       And    the    young    man     felt    how 


22  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

beautiful  a  thing  is  family  love  in  Him  in 
whom  ail  the  families  of  the  earth  are  blessed, 
and  turned  away  with  a  longing  to  be  like 
that  father  and  his  two  sons.  He  crept  up 
into  a  hay-loft,  and  there  and  then,  to  use  his 
own  words,  'for  the  first  time  I  knelt  down  and 
tried  to  pray.  I  didn't  know  a  bit  how,  but 
somehow  or  other  I  managed  to  blunder  on, 
and  I  blundered  on  that  night  and  the  next 
morning,  till  somehow,'  he  added,  with  a  sudden 
smile,  full  of  the  peace  of  God,  '  my  blundering 
on  found  me  my  Saviour.' 

*  Well,'  thought  old  Tom,  and  a  gleam  of  light 
came  into  the  dark  perplexed  face,  '  I'm  no 
scholard ;  I  can't  make  a  prayer,  but  I  can 
blunder  on.' 

The  next  day  he  was  sinking  a  well  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
earth.  His  'fellow-workmen  had  left  him  alone 
to  finish  his  dangerous  job.  Suddenly  all  the 
words  he  had  heard  and  all  his  sinful  life  came 
over  him,  and  he  felt  he  must  pray  there  and 
then.  So,  kneeling  down  by  the  side  of  his 
old   bucket,   he   put   his   rough,   horny  hands  to- 


MV  FIRST  CONVERTS.  23 

gether,  and,  while  the  great  tears  streamed 
down  that  rugged  face,  he  prayed  his  first 
prayer :  *  O  Lord,  I'm  the  biggest  of  sinners, 
but  you  are  a  bigger  Saviour.  O  Lord,  save 
poor  old  Tom  from  his  sins,  and  give  him  a 
new  heart,  for  Jesus  Christ's  sake.'  And  at  the 
bottom  of  that  deep  well,  a  hundred  and  twenty 
feet  below  the  surface  of  the  earth,  the  great 
Saviour  and  the  great  sinner  met  together,  and 
when  poor  old  Tom  was  pulled  up  to  the  sur- 
face he  was  a  new  creature  in  his  God. 

He  ca^j^e  eleven  miles  away  from  his  work, 
and  waited  four  hours  outside  my  house,  to  tell 
me  of  his  conversion ;  and  I  had  to  take  him 
in  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  when  I  got  home, 
to  give  thanks  to  the  Father  for  him. 

Poor  old;  Tom !  he  never  saw  me  without 
asking  me  if  I  wanted  a  well  sunk,  that  he 
would  be  glad  to  do  it  '  gracious '  for  me  if  I 
did.  I  believe  he  would  gladly  have  bored  the 
earth  under  my  feet  into  a  bottle-rack  *  gracious,' 
if  by  so  doing  he  could  have  testified  the  love 
and  gladness  of  which  his  old  heart  was  full. 

Another  of  my   regular   attendants   I   noticed 


24  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

always  sitting  close  to  me,  with  one  hand  up 
to  his  ear,  listening  with  a  look  of  rapt  atten- 
tion. I  soon  became  acquainted  with  him,  and 
found  he  was  an  intelligent  and  well-educated 
man,  a  gardener  by  trade,  but  placed  in  cir- 
cumstances of  great  home  unhappiness.  His 
wife  had  formed  a  sort  of  maniacal  hatred  to 
him,  which  showed  itself  in  persistent  efforts 
to  injure  him,  and  alienate  the  hearts  of  his 
children  from  him.  Always  a  moral  man,  he 
had  resisted  the  temptation  to  drown  his  sorrow 
in  intemperance,  but  he  had  never  found  any 
comfort  in  religion.  He  had  tried  church  after 
church,  but  finding  his  deafness  made  it  im- 
possible  for  him  to  hear,  he  had  latterly  given 
up  going  to  any  place  of  worship,  and  had  shut 
himself  up  in  his  miserable  home.  His  heart 
was  beginning  to  darken  down  into  a  reckless 
despair,  when  curiosity  led  him  to  the  Abbey 
school-meeting,  to  see  what  it  was  like.  To 
his  surprise  and  delight  he  could  hear  my  clear 
penetrating  woman's  voice  with  ease ;  and  before 
two  or  three  Sundays  had  passed,  he  had  found 
the  peace    which    passeth    understanding  in  his 


MY  FIRST  CONVERTS.  25 

God,  *  the  place  of  rest  imperturbable,  where 
love  is  not  forsaken  if  itself  forsaketh  not.'  The 
whole  expression  of  his  face  changed ;  he  had 
the  look  of  those 

...     in  this  loud  stunning  tide 

Of  human  care  and  crime, 
With  whom  the  melodies  abide 

Of  th'  everlasting  chime  ; 
Who  carry  music  in  their  heart 
Thro'  dusky  lane  and  wrangling  mart ; " 

and  his  love  and  gratitude  found  radiant  expres- 
sion in  the  lovely  flowers  with  which  he  filled 
my  drawing-room.  His  great  natural  beauty 
of  character  grew  perfected  by  divine  grace, 
and  despite  his  deafness  he  became  an  earnest 
worker.  A  year  or  two  after  his  wife  became 
a  Christian,  and  they  were  re-united  in  the  love 
that  passeth  knowledge.  For  both  I  have  had 
long  since  to  give  thanks  as  having  departed  in 
God's  holy  faith  and  fear. 

The  tokens  of  gratitude  I  received  were  of 
the  most  varied  kinds,  ranging,  as  may  be  seen, 
from  the  offer  of  a  well  to  a  gift  of  flowers. 
Fresh  eggs,  a  chicken,  a  Bible,  a  hare — N.B.  not 


26  IVORA'  AMOXG   jrOKA'/XC-MEiV. 

poached — a  Church  Service,  posies  of  all  sorts 
and  sizes,  a  ckister  of  field-birds  shot  at  dawn, 
whose  tender  little  loosened  throats  and  filmy 
e\'es  I  nearl}'  wept  over  as  I  held  them  up  by 
their  pretty  coral  feet,  but  which  nevertheless 
made  an  excellent  pie,  a  small  ^old  locket,  etc., 
etc  On  one  occasion,  two  very  tall  heads  of 
Erussel-sprouts  were  brought  to  the  week-day 
meeting,  and  duly  presented  after  it  was  over, 
when  I  disappeared  in  triumph  with  one  under 
either  arm,  like  a  modern  Daphne,  sprouting 
cabbage  instead  of  laurel,  as  befits  this  utilitarian 
age. 

At  times,  however,  in  my  day  and  night  visit- 
ing among  my  rough  people,  my  experiences 
were  by  no  means  so  satisfactory,  and  often 
sharply  taxed  my  mother  wit  how  best  to  ex- 
tricate myself  from  an  awkward  position.  On 
one  occasion,  I  found  myself  between  a  drunken 
husband  and  wife,  in  just  that  stage  of  inebriety 
which  makes  a  man  quarrel  with  his  shadow  for 
keeping  close  at  his  heels.  Unfortunately  this 
man  was  not  reduced  to  his  shadow,  being  well 
supplied    with    a    substantial    loud-tongued    wife 


MY  FIRST  CONVERTS.  27 

to  exercise  upon,  and  very  soon  they  got  to 
high  words,  drowning  my  feeble  efforts  to  make 
myself  heard.  They  were  so  maddening  one 
another,  that  I  saw  in  a  very  few  moments 
they  would  come  to  blows,  utterly  regardless 
of  my  presence,  and  for  all  I  could  do  to  pre- 
vent it,  he  might  half  kill  her  under  my  eyes. 
What  was  to  be  done  t  My  eyes  fell  on  a  tea- 
tray,  with  some  loose  cups  and  saucers  and 
spoons  upon  it.  In  a  moment  I  set  to  work, 
and  hammered  on  it  with  such  inspired  energy, 
producing  such  a  rattling  fugue  of  cups  and 
saucers  and  tea-tray,  as  effectually  drowned  the 
voices  of  my  belligerents.  For  a  few  moments 
they  tried  to  go  on  shouting  at  one  another,  but, 
bless  you  !  it  did  no  harm,  as  neither  could  hear 
the  other,  and  soon  they  gave  it  up  in  despair. 

Then  I  put  in  a  few  mild  persuasive  words, 
till  they  began  at  one  another  again ;  and 
again  I  betook  myself  to  my  loud  but  peace- 
ful drum  till  I  gained  myself  another  short  hear- 
ing. At  last,  between  these  *  two  voices,'  mine 
and  the  tea-tray's,  I  got  them  into  a  better  frame 
of  mind,  and  the  threatened  danger  was  averted. 


28  WORIC  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

On  another  occasion,  a  drunken  tailor,  whom 
his  wife  persisted  in  fetching  out  of  a  public- 
house  for  me  to  exhort,  greatly  embarrassed 
me  by  insisting  on  'seeing  me  straight  home/ 
.  as  he  expressed  it,  with  a  ludicrous  disregard 
to  facts,  and  the  irregular  curves  and  zig-zags 
we  should  infallibly  describe  in  his  present 
condition.  However,  as  the  choice  lay  between 
having  him  as  my  escort  or  leaving  him  to 
vent  his  ill-humour  in  beating  his  wife,  I  re- 
signed myself  to  my  fate.  I  believe  I  walked 
miles  before  I  reached  home  that  night.  I 
never  estimated  before  the  force  of  the  drunken 
Irishman's  exclamation,  on  being  condoled  with 
on  the  length  of  way  he  had  come,  '  Och,  yer 
honour,  it's  not  the  length  but  the  breadth.' 

My  difficulties  during  the  first  few  months 
of  my  work  were  further  enhanced  by  a  strong 
opposition  from  without.  The  unreasoning  feel- 
ing against  a  woman  fulfilling  her  Lord's  in- 
junction, *Go  tell  My  brethren  that  I  go  unto 
My  Father  and  their  Father,  to  My  God  and 
their  God,'  was  stronger  then  than  it  is  now. 
The    old    tendency    to    stick    to    the    letter    of 


MY  FIRST  CONVERTS.  29 

Scripture,  and  sin  against  its  divine  progressive 
spirit,  to  bind  women,  after  nineteen  centuries 
of  freedom,  with  precisely  the  same  bandages 
and  restrictions  which  were  necessary  to  pre- 
serve social  order  when  first  the  equality  of 
the  sexes  was  practically  assumed  by  Chris- 
tianity, was  then  in  full  force.  Nay,  the  usual 
tendency  showed  itself  to  extend  these  restric- 
tions from  their  original  use,  as  regulations  for 
the  ecclesia,  the  public  and  autliorised  services 
of  the  church,  to  all  cases  whatever ;  rendering 
it  unlawful,  not  only  for  me  to  teach  my  poor, 
ignorant  men,  who  were  willing  to  be  taught 
about  God  and  Christ  by  me,  and  by  no  one 
else,  but  also  for  a  mother  to  teach  her  grown- 
up sons,  a  queen  to  address  her  parliament,  a 
woman  to  teach  the  public  by  her  written 
words.  A  storm  accordingly  raged  for  some 
time  against  me,  during  which  my  own  clergy- 
man stood  valiantly  by  me,  quietly  urging,  on 
all  sides,  that  some  of  the  worst  drunkards  and 
blasphemers  in  his  parish  were  now  regular 
and  consistent  communicants  at  his  church;  was 
he  to  prefer  their  remaining  drunkards  and  bias 


30  IVOJ^J^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN", 

phemers  to  their  being  influenced  by  a  lady, 
and  oppose  what  God  had  blessed  ? 

For  some  months  the  opposition  lasted  ;  but 
for  the  encouragement  of  all  steady  workers, 
I  gladly  record  that,  even  in  one  of  the  great 
centres  of  ecclesiasticism,  it  gave  way  before 
good  work  and  practical  results.  The  leading 
Evangelical  clergyman,  who  had  begun  by  cut- 
ting me  in  the  streets,  ended  by  presenting  me 
with  four  volumes  of  his  sermons  in  token  of 
his  esteem  and  sympathy  Vv'ith  my  work.  Being 
of  a  placable  disposition  I  built  the  bulky 
tomes  up  into  an  altar  of  friendship  in  one 
corner  of  my  room,  and  I  need  scarcely  say 
that  my  sense  of  reverence  forbade  my  ever 
disturbing  the  sacred  stones. 

But  what  I  most  needed  never  failed  me — 
the  support  of  my  own  clergyman,  the  friend- 
ship and  hearty  co-operation  of  one  of  our 
Indian  missionaries,  then  working  as  a  curate 
in  the  same  district  as  myself,  and,  what  was 
sweetest  and  best,  the  tender,  wise  sympathy 
of  my  father. 


CHAPTER  III. 


INTELLECTUAL   GOSPELS    AND    THE    PEOPLE. 


UT  how  did  I  get  this  influence  over 
working  men  ?  perhaps  some  one  will 
ask.  starting,  as  I  did,  with  no  know- 
ledge of  them  as  a  class,  or  as  individuals,  and 
finding  myself  in  a  few  weeks  with  some  thou- 
sand on  my  hands.  As  the  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion may  be  helpful  to  other  workers,  I  will  try 
and  reply  to  it  in  some  detail. 

The  class  I  had  to  deal  with  were,  with  a 
slight  admixture  of  fossil-diggers,  answering  in 
some  respects  to  navvies,  just  the  common 
artizans  of  any  non-manufacturing  town, — brick- 
layers, carpenters,  shoemakers,  gas-men,  well- 
sinkers,  farm  labourers,  etc.  Wild  as  they  were 
in  their  habits,  I  always  say  that  for  head  and 
heart   you    could    scarcely    match    them.     Their 


32  WORK  AMONG   IVOR  KING- MEN, 

ignorance,  in  its  depth  and  solidity,  to  the 
last  was  a  surprise  to  me ;  the  learned  pig 
would  certainly  have  beaten  them  in  a  com- 
petitive examination;  but  at  the  same  time 
they  were  possessed  of  a  plenitude  of  mother 
wit,  which  made  them  a  delightful,  but  difficult, 
audience  to  address.  I  remember  one  of  the 
members  for  the  University,  himself  a  noted 
speaker,  saying,  that  he  would  rather  address 
any  other  mob ;  that  if  an  accident  did  happen 
to  one's  nominative,  or  one's  feet  got  hopelessly 
entangled  in  a  broken  construction,  there  was 
no  hope  of  its  passing  unobserved, — the  speaker's 
confusion  was  certain  to  be  rendered  worse 
confounded  by  a  perfect  storm  of  banter  and 
rough  jokes.  The  element  of  the  clever,  sceptical 
mechanic  was  wholly  wanting.  I  only  met  with 
one  case  of  intellectual  doubt  of  the  shallowest 
kind,  a  fervent  disciple  of  Shelley;  but  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  rough  scepticism  of  a  moral 
kind  among  them.  The  rooted  belief  in  a 
good-natured,  easy-going  God,  who  would  never 
be  hard  on  a  poor  fellow  whatever  his  life 
might   be,   and    a   consequent    total  disbelief  in 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.     33 

His  moral  laws ;  a  conviction  that  all  religion 
was  a  sham  ;  much  Pharisaism  in  fustian  that 
thanks  God  it  is  not  as  other  men  are ; 
methodists,  saints,  cants,  hypocrites ;  *  I  give 
tithes  of  all  I  possess  to  the  devil,  and  get 
fresh  twice  in  the  week  ; '  a  hatred  of  parsons  ; 
an  ideal  of  manliness  w^hich  aimed  alternately 
at  the  beer  barrel  and  the  bull-dog ;  and  a 
disbelief  in  punishment  hereafter, — these  were 
the  chief  enemies  to  be  contended  ag-ainst. 
and  I  found  them  quite  enough. 

In  the  first  place  it  was  quite  useless  to  preach 
ready-made  doctrines  to  them.  Justification  by 
faith,  imputed  righteousness,  vicarious  satisfac- 
tion, election,  sacramental  grace,  regeneration, 
— all  these  things  were  simple  Greek  to  them. 
Perhaps  it  was  fortunate  that  it  was  so  ;  for  at 
that  time  I  was  passing  through  the  intellectual 
difficulties  which  most  thoughtful  young  minds  of 
the  present  day  must  encounter,  and  my  hold  on 
received  opinions,  except  so  far  as  I  could  work 
them  out  for  myself,  was  loosened.  It  was  evident 
that  they  and  I  must  begin  from  the  beginning. 

I  have  often  thought  that  if  some  of  our  great 

3 


34  IVOJ^Jir  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

thinkers  could  have  my  problem  to  solve,  it 
would  be  a  very  good  thing  for  them.  If  only 
once  they  could  wake  up  one  morning,  and  find 
themselves  with  some  thousand  rough  but  shrewd 
fellows  on  their  hands  to  be  saved  somehow,  saved 
in  that  grossly  intelligible  sense  of  the  word 
salvation  which  even  Mr.  Voysey  would  accept 
— saved  from  sin  and  degradation.  There  they 
were ;  I  could  not  get  rid  of  them,  waiting  with 
their  listening  faces  turned  towards  me;  some  in- 
telligible theory  of  the  universe  I  must  give  them 
to  get  them  to  square  their  lives  in  obedience 
to  its  laws.  Would  it  be  any  use  to  tell  them 
*  of  a  stream  of  tendency,  not  ourselves,  which 
makes  for  righteousness  ? '  Alas  !  the  stream  of 
tendency  with  which  they  were  most  familiar,  made 
for  the  public-house  and  wife-beating.  Or  would 
it  be  any  good  to  preach  to  them  the  'method 
of  Jesus,'  the  duty  of  self-abnegation,  to  these 
men  who  were  driven,  by  every  wild  passion  of 
their  natures,  to  self-indulgence — passions  that 
would  make  short  work  of  any  abstract  notions, 
and  could  only  be  cast  out  by  some  other 
passion   of  love  and    adoration,  such  as  only  a 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.     35 

living  person  can  inspire  ?  Or  was  I  to  follow 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  and  rise  with  them  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher  religion,  and  preach  to 
them  the  great  inscrutable  Power,  to  which 
neither  personality  nor  emotion  can  be  as- 
signed, and  expect  that  the  knowledge  of  It 
would  regulate  their  moral  emotions,  with  which 
It  was  out  of  all  relation  ?  Or  even  preach  a 
moral  and  beneficent  Being,  the  Ruler  of  all 
things,  far  removed  from  them  in  the  altitude 
of  His  perfections  and  blessedness ;  when  the 
misery  and  disorder  of  their  lives  was  a  proof 
either  that  He  did  not  mind,  or  if  He  did, 
didn't  much  care  ? 

Alas !  I  felt  forlornly  enough  that  my  intel- 
lectual gospels  had  but  one  fault  when  brought 
into  contact  with  the  mass  of  humanity — they 
would  not  work.  The  intellectual  few  might 
be  saved  ;  but  as  for  this  people  that  knoweth 
not,  on  this  showing  we  must  say,  with  the 
Pharisee  of  old,  *They  are  cursed.*  Only  in 
the  Christianity  of  the  Bible  could  I  find  what 
I  wanted ;  could  I  not  work  out  some  simple 
form  of  it  for  them  and  me  ? 


36  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

I  took  my  stand  at  once  on  the  great  facts 
of  life  and  conscience.  I  never  laid  any  doctrine 
before  them  without  first  carefully  verifying  it 
for  them  from  their  own  life,  their  own  con- 
science, their  own  heart.  If  for  one  moment 
I  departed  from  this  ground,  I  felt  at  once  I 
had  lost  my  hold  upon  them.  At  one  fell 
swoop  I  had  to  get  rid  of  all  petrified  dogmas, 
and  received  opinions,  and  orthodox  phraseology, 
and  stick  to  what  I  could  in  some  measure  prove. 

My  first  effort  was  to  get  them  to  believe  in 
moral  law ;  that  there  are  great  inevitable  laws 
in  the  moral  world  as  well  as  in  the  physical, 
and  what  a  man  sows  that  will  he  also  reap. 
When  they  used  to  say  to  me,  *I  don't  believe 
in  hell ;  God  is  much  too  merciful  to  damn  a 
poor  fellow  Hke  me,'  I  answered  cheerfully,  '  Of 
course  He  is  much  too  good  and  merciful.  It 
is  not  God  that  "  damns  you,"  as  you  say ;  it 
is  you  that  condemn  your  own  selves  to  a  life 
of  sin  and  misery  away  from  Him.'  And  I  used 
to  illustrate  it  by  what  happened  to  Dr.  Brown, 
the  author  of  '  Rab  and  his  Friends,'  in  the 
great  cholera  year.     He  was  then  a  young  man, 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.     37 

practising  at  Chatham,  when  one  night  he  was 
called  up  to  go  at  once  to  a  village  down  the 
Thames,  where  the  cholera  had  broken  out. 
The  men  rowed  for  their  lives,  for  they  were 
pulling  against  Death.  The  first  thing  he  did 
after  he  had  prescribed  for  the  sick,  was  to  call 
all  who  were  not  already  stricken  together. 
Not  one  would  allow  it,  but  he  could  see,  by  a 
look  in  their  faces,  that  they  were  all  in  for  the 
cholera.  So  he  gave  them  a  prescription  which, 
he  assured  them,  if  taken  in  time,  would  save 
their  lives.  They  all  took  it  but  one  woman. 
In  vain  he  entreated ;  she  obstinately  refused. 
*  She  was  not  going  to  have  the  cholera — not 
she.'  They  all  had  it ;  but  that  woman  was 
the  only  one  who  died  of  it.  *Now,  then,'  I 
asked,  '  was  it  the  doctor's  fault }  * 

'No,  that  it  warn't;  it  was  the  woman's  own 
fault' 

'Well,  then,  you  have  got  a  disease  in  your 
soul  called  sin ;  you  may  deny  it  in  words, 
but  you  know  it ;  and,  what's  more,  God  knows 
it,  and  offers  you  a  remedy.  He  offers  you  a 
Saviour,  and    He   says    to   the  heart  that  loves 


38  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

and  receives  Him,  ''  The  blood  of  Jesus  Chribt 
cleanseth  from  all  sin."  But  you  won't  take 
the  remedy,  and  you  perish.  Whose  doing  is  it ; 
God's  or  your  own  ? ' 

'  Well,  I  know  I  am  in  the  wrong  way  now ; 
but  before  I  die  I  mean  to  turn  over  a  new 
leaf.' 

*  You  mean  to  say  you  will  cry,  "  Lord,  have 
mercy  upon  me "  on  your  death-bed,  and  then 
you  think  you  will  be  all  right.  My  brother, 
be  sure  of  this,  there's  no  such  thing  as  running 
up  a  bill  all  our  lifetime  with  the  devil,  and  then 
sneaking  out  when  pay-time  comes.  You  are  much 
too  honest  yourself  not  to  see  that.' 

Sometimes  I  used  to  put  it  differently  to 
them.  ^Well,  suppose  you  were  to  go  to 
Heaven,  with  your  unchanged  hearts,  when 
you  die,  what  would  you  do  there }  Death  it- 
self won't  change  you.  Death  is  no  more  than 
birth.  The  child  that  is  diseased  before  birth 
is  diseased  after  birth.  Would  you  be  happy  ^ 
What !  no  publics,  no  getting  fresh,  no  loose  talk 
and  jolly  songs,  nothing  but  good  things,  the 
very    mention    of    which    makes   you   uncomfort- 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.     39 

able  ?  Why,  you  would  be  like  a  man  a  friend 
of  mine,  a  physician,  was  called  in  to  see.  He 
was  a  farmer,  who  had  lived  a  bad  life  all  his 
days,  ruined  his  constitution  by  drinking,  and 
now  all  the  doctors  in  the  world  could  not  save 
him.  So  Dr.  Bull  said  he  had  better  send  for* 
a  clergyman,  and  prepare  himself  for  another 
world,  as  his  days  in  this  were  numbered.  The 
dying  man  accordingly  turned  to  his  wife,  and 
asked  her  to  send  for  their  minister,  when  she 
burst  out  into  a  bitter  laugh..  "  What,"  she  ex- 
claimed, "are  yoii  thinking  of  going  to  Heaven 
after  all  t  And  what  will  you  do  when  you 
get  there }  You'll  be  like  a  pig  in  a  parlour !  " 
*  If  it  were  possible  to  put  a  sinner  into  Heaven/ 
I  used  to  urge,  '  you  could  not  put  him  in  a  hotter 
hell.' 

And  little  by  little  they  came  to  see  the 
great  Christian  doctrine,  that  eternal  sin  must 
be,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  eternal  punish- 
ment and  eternal  misery,  and  that  salvation 
means  being  saved  from  the  guilt  and  power 
of  sin  and  selfishness,  and  not  merely  going  to 
Heaven.     As  to  the  speculative    point,   whether 


40  WORIC  AMONG   WORKING- MEN: 

moral  evil  is  eternal,  whether  in  that  KoXaac^; 
alcovLo^,  the  *  chastisement  of  ages/  into  which 
the  wicked  are  told  to  depart,  there  be  ultimate 
purification  and  deliverance  from  the  worm  that 
dieth  not  and  the  fire  that  is  not  quenched,  the 
remorse  and  the  suffering  that  eternally  cling  to 
moral  evil,  I  simply  let  that  alone.  It  is  with 
the  chances  of  this  world,  and  not  of  the  next, 
that  we  are  practically  concerned. 

But  how  to  make  them  feel  not  only  the 
consequences  of  sin,  but  what  sin  is  in  itself 
before  God,  its  exceeding  sinfulness,  I  frankly 
confess  I  found  but  one  means  for  doing  this — 
Christ  and  the  Cross  of  Christ.  In  that  perfect 
manhood,  so  tender  yet  so  strong,  courageous 
unto  death  for  the  truth ;  pitilessly  severe 
against  all  sham  and  dishonesty,  but  opening 
its  arms  for  the  weary  and  heavy-laden  to  rest, 
and  weep  upon  its  breast ;  cutting  keen  as 
crystal  through  all  false  pretences,  yet,  Hke 
crystal,  yielding  to  the  weakest  beam  of  light, 
and  dyeing  it  with  a  thousand  lovely  hues,  so 
that  the  repentant  harlot  becomes,  under  that 
gracious   influence,  a  saint,  and  the  rude  fisher- 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.    41 

man  an  apostle  of  the  world;  in  Him,  taking 
our  children  in  His  arms,  feeling  for  all  human 
sorrow,  weeping  beside  our  open  graves,  healing 
all  who  were  oppressed,  they  grew  ashamed  of 
their  own  low  type  of  manhood.  And  in  the 
suffering,  the  blood,  the  agony,  the  death  of 
shame  that  the  world's  evil,  that  our  sin  cost 
the  Son  of  God,  they  began  to  realise  the  ex- 
ceeding hatefulness  of  sin  ;  while  in  that  God 
spared  not  His  own  Son,  but  freely  gave  Him 
up  for  us  all,  they  were  led  to  realise  God's 
love  to  the  sinner,  the  heart  of  their  Father 
towards  them.  I  troubled  them  with  no  theories, 
I  simply  gave  them  the  facts ;  and  I  illustrated 
those  facts,  not  by  foolish  figments  about  a  good 
little  boy  bearing  the  punishment  of  a  bad  little 
boy,  or  an  impossible  monarch  who  caused  him- 
self to  be  flogged  in  the  stead  of  his  rebellious 
soldiers,  but  by  all  the  most  sweet  and  solemn 
facts  of  life.  For  whatever  difficulties  may  be 
felt  about  the  Atonement,  the  fact  of  it  is  woven 
into  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  human  life. 
Vicarious  suffering  meets  us,  pleading  with 
pierced    hands,    at    every   turn.      We   could   not 


42  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

enter  into  life  but  by  the  anguish  of  the  One 
who  loves  us  best.  The  innocent  beasts  must 
bleed  and  die  that  we  may  live.  Our  sin  and 
sorrow  is  for  ever  pressing  on  the  hearts  of  those 
that  love  us,  and  becoming  their  shame  and 
their  pain.  Love  crowned  with  our  thorns  is 
for  ever  atoning"  for  us,  putting  away  our  selfish- 
ness, and  making  us  '  at  one '  with  our  better 
selves.  All  human  life  is  made  up  of  fragments 
of  the  true  Cross ;  and  all  things  lead  up  to 
Him,  who  loves  us  with  more  than  a  mother's 
love,  suffered  for  us  more  than  a  mother's  pangs, 
bears  with  us  with  more  than  a  mother's  patience. 
And  however  men  may  dispute  over  the  theory, 
the  Atonement  did  become  a  great  fact  in  our 
midst,  j  Beneath  the  power  of  the  Cross  of  Christ, 
I  have  seen  four  hundred  rough,  world-hardened, 
reckless  men,  weeping  and  sobbing  hke  children 
over  their  sins.  I  have  seen,  Sunday  after 
Sunday,  bad  men  turned  into  good  by  it,  men 
who  were  drunkards,  profligates,  blasphemers, 
fighters,  gamblers,  turned  into  good,  devout, 
tender-hearted  men.  For  months  I  never  spoke 
but  this   change  took  place,   two   or    three   thus 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.     43 

receiving  the  word  of  life,  and  becoming  com- 
pletely changed  men.  How  then  can  Christianity- 
be  anything  but  a  great  life-giving  fact  to  me  ? 

One  man  in  particular,  I  remember,  so  wild 
a  fellow  that  on  taking  his  wages,  he  would 
sometimes  drink  all  Saturday  night  and  Sunday, 
and  return  to  his  work  on  the  Monday  morning, 
never  having  set  eyes  on  his  starving  wife  and 
children,  and  having  spent  all  the  money  which 
ought  to  have  gone  to  their  support.  He  came 
into  the  Abbey  school-room  a  drunken  blas- 
phemer; he  left  it  a  Christian  man.  His  own 
simple  account  of  his  sudden  conversion  was, 
'I  heard  that  my  Saviour  lived  and  died  for 
me ;  now  I  mean  to  live  and  die  for  Him.' 
That  man,  with  all  that  force  of  evil  habit  in 
him,  never  had  a  fall.  I  always  think  the  hap- 
piest moment  of  my  life  was  one  summer  even- 
ing when  I  went  into  his  cottage.  His  wife 
was  out,  but  through  the  staircase  door  that 
stood  open,  I  could  hear  him  praying  with  his 
little  child,  as  he  put  her  to  bed,  the  child's 
soft  voice  following  his  as  they  trod  that  home- 
ward  path   together.     A   few   moments   after   he 


44  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

appeared  in  his  working  dress,  just  as  he  had 
come  off  the  brickfields,  with  the  peace  of  God 
shining  in  his  face. 

But  with  these  terrible  struggles  with  evil 
going  on  all  around  me,  with  some  so  bound 
and  tied  with  the  chain  of  their  sins  that,  though 
they  heard  my  voice  and  would  fling  themselves 
down  on  their  knees  at  my  side,  they  seemed 
powerless  to  break  loose  from  the  force  of  evil 
habit;  nay,  by  my  own  need  of  courage  and 
wisdom,  and  my  own  deep  consciousness  of  its 
being  given  in  answer  to  prayer,  I  was  literally 
driven  to  the  belief  in  a  great  spiritual  force, 
call  it  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  what  you  will,  a  divine 
energizing  power  which  we  can  lay  hold  of  by 
faith  and  make  our  own.  More  and  more  I 
taught  them  that  conversion  is  a  gift  from  God, 
to  be  had  for  the  earnest  asking;  that  the  love 
of  God  is  poured  out  {kKKk'^QjraC)  of  His  deep 
heart  into  ours  by  the  Holy  Spirit  which  is 
given  us ;  and  if  they  would  only  surrender 
themselves  wholly  to  that  mighty  influence, 
they  had  but  to  open  the  door  of  their  hearts, 
and    that    eternal    sunshine    would    stream    in; 


INTELLECTUAL  GOSPELS  AND  THE  PEOPLE,     45 

while,  without  Him,  all  my  talking  to  them  was 
only  so  much  physic  poured  down  a  dead 
man's  throat. 

And  so  they  and  I  together  worked  out  a 
simple  theology  for  ourselves — faith  in  a  Father 
in  heaven,  who  loves  us  ;  in  the  cross  of  Christ, 
revealing  the  sinfulness  of  sin,  and  the  love  of 
God  to  the  sinner,  and  the  inmost  meaning  of 
which  is  death  unto  sin  and  life  unto  God ; 
faith  in  a  divine  energizing  Spirit;  a  recognition 
that,  as  long  as  we  continue  in  a  state  of  sin 
and  selfishness,  we  are  and  must  be  in  a  state 
of  punishment  here  and  hereafter :  and  a  belief 
in  our  Father's  home  where  sin  and  sorrow  would 
never  enter.  And  for  all  practical  purposes  we 
found  this  simple  faith  enough. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


MEN     AND     WOMEN. 


iT  must  not  be  supposed  that  my  work 
lay  only  among  the  men.  In  many 
ways  I  worked  quite  as  hard  among 
the  women.  Indeed,  I  am  much  disposed  to 
agree  with  a  well-known  working-man  political 
speaker,  who,  when  I  was  suggesting  carrying  out 
some  plan  of  reform  by  the  help  of  men  alone, 
exclaimed,  '  Miss,  you  will  do  nothing  without 
our  female  brethren.  One  female  is  worth  ten 
males.'  The  women  having  chiefly  the  training 
of  the  rising  generation,  the  man  being  out  at 
work  all  day,  her  influence  is  necessarily  the  most 
important.  But  I  confess  that  my  whole  experi- 
ence has  been  that  the  best  way  to  get  at  the 
women  is  to  get  at  the  men  first,  to  recognise  in 
this,  as  in  other  things,  the  Divine  order  that  the 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.  47 

man  is  the  head  of  the  woman,  and  while  her 
head  goes  one  way,  it  is  very  hard  for  the  rest 
of  her  to  go  another ;  whilst  her  husband  goes  to 
the  public-house  and  gets  drunk,  it  is  very  hard 
for  her  to  go  to  church  and  get  pious.  Indeed, 
I  know  no  greater  proof  that  with  God  all  things 
are  possible,  than  a  drunkard's  wife  who  is  a 
Christian.  But  when  the  husband  turned  round, 
it  was  the  exception,  and  not  the  rule,  when  the 
wife  did  not  become  earnest-minded  as  well. 

My  right-hand  woman,  to  whom  I  always  went 
for  comfort  and  counsel  in  difficulties,  was  a  certain 
old  charwoman  of  the  name  of  Phoebe  Simpson. 
I  should  be  loth  that  any  notes  of  my  work 
should  go  forth  without  embalming  her  precious 
old  memory ;  like  some  sweet  hedgerow  flower 
laid  between  the  leaves,  dim  with  common  dust, 
and  yet  touched  with  a  beauty  of  the  skies.  I 
can  see  her  now, — the  short  thick-set  figure,  the 
queer  gentle  old  face,  deeply  lined  with  suffering 
and  sorrow,  the  writing  of  God's  finger,  which  I 
never  see  on  an  old  face  without  a  feeling  01 
reverential  awe ;  and  looking  out  from  the  midst 
of  it  all,  the  dear  old  faded  eyes,  that  seemed  to 


48  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN'. 

have  wept  themselves  dim  with  tears  of  pity. 
How  much  '  sweetness  and  light '  lay  hid  behind 
that  dress  of  rusty  widow's  black ;  what  practical 
wisdom,  what  deep  womanly  compassions,  linking 
the  Divine  with  the  human  ;  what  kindly  humour, 
above  all,  what  extraordinary  moral  and  spiritual 
elevation !  As  long  as  Christianity  can  embody 
itself  in  Phoebe  Simpsons,  I  can't  help  thinking 
it  must  be  taken  as  its  own  evidence,  and,  in  this 
solid  form  at  least,  can  defy  our  modern  critical 
acids. 

Odd  to  say,  Phoebe  Simpson  began  her  life  in 
Christ  in  a  thunderstorm, — one  of  the  most  terrible 
hail  storms  I  believe  on  record  having  burst  over 
the  eastern  counties  ;  thinking  the  end  of  the  world 
had  come  and  found  her  in  her  sins,  she  knelt 
down  and  cast  herself  on  her  Saviour's  love. 
The  storm  passed,  but  the  love  remained.  How 
Phoebe  Simpson  got  rid  of  her  gossiping  neigh- 
bours, and  took  up  her  neglected  home  duties, 
was  most  characteristic. 

*  How  did  you  manage,  Mrs.  Simpson  ? '  I 
once  asked.  *  For  you  know  the  Bible  tells  us  to 
be  courteous ;  and  to  turn  folk  out  of  our  house, 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.  4^ 

however  much  in  the   way   they  may  be,  is  apt 
to  look  very  rude.' 

'  ril  tell  you  how  I  managed  that/  she  an- 
swered, with  the  funny  humorous  twinkle  that 
used  to  light  up  her  quaint  old  face.  *  The  first 
thing  I  did  was  to  get  the  brush  and  dust-pan 
and  lay  them  handy  'gainst  any  neighbour  comed 
in.  Soon,  in  pops  Mrs.  Smith.  '  Mrs.  Smith,' 
says  I,  'you  won't  mind  my  doing  a  bit  of  dustin', 
will  you,  whilst  you're  talkin'  t '  Of  course  she 
couldn't  but  be  agreeable  to  that.  So  down  on 
my  knees  I  goes,  and  begins  to  dust  with  all  my 
might.  But  somehow,  it  was  a  very  curious  thing, 
but  the  dust  alius  would  gather  thickest  just 
under  the  chair  my  neighbour  was  a-sittin'  on. 
She'd  shift,  and  shift ;  but  I'd  alius  be  arter  her 
with  my  old  dust-pan,  and  the  dust  'ud  get  up 
her  nose,  and  she'd  begin  to  sneeze  ever  so — 
ketcher !  ketcher  ! — and  soon  she'd  say,  "  Well,  I 
think — ketcher! — I'll  call  in  another  day,  Mrs. 
Simpson,  as  I  see  you  are  —  ketcher!  —  busy." 
And  so  in  less  than  a  week  I  had  dusted  all  my 
neighbours  out  of  my  house.' 

Dear  old    Phoebe  Simpson  !  she  had   a  great 

4 


50  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

objection  to  the  running  tongue  which   so   often 
goes   with    falling    feet.     I    often    think    of    her 
definition  of   religion,  *  I  think,  Miss,  religion  is 
doing  things  still.'     The  words  might  be  taken  in 
their  double  sense,  not  only  of  that  quietness  and 
confidence  which   was   so   emphatically   dear   old 
Phoebe   Simpson's  strength,  but  of  unweariedness 
in  well-doing.     Like  a  star,  she  was  always  about 
her  silent  tasks  of  light.     Wherever  there  was  a 
sore  heart  to  be    comforted,    or   a   sore  hand   to 
be   leeched   or   poulticed,    among  the   neighbours 
round,  you  might  be  sure  that   Phoebe   Simpson 
had  been  there   before   you.     But  to  see   her   in 
her  glory,  one  ought  to  see    her  in   the   ragged 
Sunday  class  of  little  waifs  and  strays  she  had 
gathered  about   her,  carolling   like   a   hoarse   old 
lark  at  the  top  of  her  ancient  voice,  and  followed 
by  a  rabble  of  childish  pipes  and  trebles,  which 
'wandered  on  as  loth  to  die,'  without  quite  the 
sweetness  of  Wordsworth's  echo,  while  she  occa- 
sionally   applied    the    well-worn    corners   of    her 
hymn-book  to  a  curly  head    that  was   not   con- 
ducting itself  with  due  propriety.     I  often  wonder 
whether  the  present  thriving   Sunday-schools  re- 


MEN  AND  WOMEN,  51 

member  or  even  know  of  their  humble  parentage, 
the  sweet  old  heart  that  out  of  the  depth 
of  her  poverty,  and  the  riches  of  her  love, 
gave  them  birth  in  the  cottage  room  in  Gas 
Lane. 

She  was  a  much  tried  woman,  plenteousness  of 
tears  to  drink  was  her  portion.  *  Whom  I  ten- 
derly love,*  I  rebuke  and  chasten.'  Her  only 
son  was  a  great  trouble  to  her.  I  can  see  him 
now,  a  great  stalwart-looking  fellow,  but  with  a 
constitution  utterly  broken  down  by  his  wild 
drinking  ways,  pacing  up  and  down  my  dining- 
room,  exclaiming  in  agony, — 

'They  call  it  pleasure.  But  look  at  me,  a  young 
fellow  of  twenty-four,  broken  down  with  grinding 
like  an  old  blind  hoss  in  the  devil's  mill.  They 
call  it  pleasure,  but  I  call  it  hard  work.' 

I  do  not  know  whether  his  mother's  prayers 
have  yet  been  heard  for  him,  but  I  oijly  know 
with  the  Bishop  of  old,  that  the  child  of  such 
prayers  and  tears  cannot  be  lost. 

*  The  word  used  here  for  love  is  not  the  ordinary  word 
ayaTrao),  but  the  more  familiar  word  ^iXew  used  for  the  intimate 
love  between  two  friends. 


52  WORK'  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

Dear  old  Pha^bc  worked  with  nic  heart  and 
soul,  in  recruiting  for  my  workinj^-mcn's  meetings. 
She  would  trot  round  fn^m  door  to  door  to  tell 
them  I  had  returned  from  my  summer  holiday, 
and  the  meeting  would  be  held  as  usual  next 
Sunday,  generally,  however,  being  greeted  with, 
*  We  knowed  that  afore,  missus.  All  right,  we're 
a-coming.*  The  missionary  earnestness,  however, 
which  the  men  inspired  in  her  breast,  and  that 
of  some  other  women,  was  not  founded  1  fear  on 
any  high  appreciation  of  the  sex.  I  fear  the 
value  attached  to  the  nobler  male  was  decidedly 
low,  and  that  the  estimation  in  which  he  was  held 
was  pretty  much  expressed  in  the  response  I  met 
with  at  one  door,  at  which  I  had  timidly  knocked, 
to  know  if  there  were  any  men  there  I  could  ask 
to  my  meeting.  '  No,  thank  God,'  the  woman 
replied,  '  wc  have  no  males  here  ;  *  and  the  door 
was  banged  in  my  face  with  a  sharp  snap,  that 
gave  a  singular  emphasis  to  the  thanksgiving. 

One  of  my  great  difliculties  at  first  was  one 
which  I  suppose  all  educated  people  feel, — how 
to  put  my  thoughts  into  an  effective  and  telling 
form,  how,  in  one  word,  to  speak  to  the  people. 


MEN  AND  WOMEN,  53 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  plain  and  suit- 
able commonplaces  will  go  down  with  working- 
men.  Working-men  emphatically  want  strong 
meat,  thoughts  as  racy  as  their  own  expres- 
sions ;  they  reject  sweet  pap  fit  for  children. 
But  if  any  one  supposes  that  my  power  of 
speaking  to  them  was  a  gift  that  came  naturally 
to  me,  without  any  effort  on  my  part,  let  them, 
once  for  all,  dispossess  themselves  of  any  such 
idea.  Gift,  like  genius,  I  often  think,  only  means 
an  infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains.  I  served 
a  hard  apprenticeship  enough.  My  familiarity 
with  Shakespeare,  Wordsworth,  and  Tennyson 
had  fortunately  trained  me  in  the  use  of  good 
Saxon  English ;  I  could  speak  of  *  going  to 
bed,'  without  saying,  *  ere  you  resign  yourself 
to  repose.'  But  how  to  put  things  forcibly  and 
clearly  to  uneducated  men  I  set  to  work  to 
learn  from  those  who  had  proved  themselves 
masters  in  the  art;  I  carefully  studied  Spur- 
geon's  sermons,  and  any  other  preacher  to  the 
people  I  could  hear  of;  and  I  read  many  of 
the  old  Puritan  writers,  such  as  old  Gurnall's 
'  Christian's     Complete     Armour,'     Brooks,     and 


54  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

writers  even  as  late  as  Berridge,  all  of  them 
remarkable  for  Shakespearian  force  and  quaint- 
ness  of  expression ;  and  I  diligently  wrote  out 
any  thought  that  might  be  useful  to  me,  trans- 
forming and  adapting  it  for  my  own  purposes. 
I  ransacked  magazines,  sermons,  books  of  all 
kinds,  for  good,  strong  illustrations,  which  we 
must  always  remember  are,  to  the  mind  of  the 
uneducated,  what  diagrams  and  pictures  are  to 
the  eye,  explaining  and  embodying  the  meaning. 
Often  as  not,  my  own  work  gave  me  the  best 
illustrations.  I  would  take  the  next  Sunday 
some  difficulty  or  objection  which  had  been 
suggested  to  me  in  conversation  with  some  of 
the  men  during  the  week,  and  discuss  its  bear- 
ings for  the  good  of  all.  When  put  before 
them,  not  as  an  abstract  truth,  but  in  the  form 
of  a  talk  with  one  of  themselves,  it  came  home 
to  them  with  far  more  power. 

Some  of  the  comphments  my  speaking  re- 
ceived were  very  funny.  A  farmer  being  asked 
what  he  thought  of  an  address  I  had  given, 
exclaimed,  *  Why,  I  had  no  idea  a  woman  could 
speak  like   that  1     It  wasn't  only  what  she  said, 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.  55 

it  was  the  noise    she    made.      It    was    splendid 
both  ways ! ' 

But  what  I  found  still  more  trying,  were  the 
wild  renderings  and  transformations  my  words 
underwent  at  the  hands  of  my  audience.  One 
dear  old  man,  who,  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy- 
eight,  became  an  humble  child-like  Christian, 
and  who  twice  in  the  week  used  to  walk  eight 
miles  to  hear  me,  had  one  favourite  version  of 
the  words  which  caused  his  conversion,  to  which 
he  adhered  with  frightful  fixity,  and  retailed  to 
every  one  he  met.  *  There  was  three  of  us 
old  men  a-settin'  together,  and  you  turned,  and 
you  shook  your  little  finger  at  us,  and  you  said  : 
"  You  old  men  there,  you  are  goin'  to  hell  as 
fast  as  your  old  legs  can  carry  you  ! "  I  never 
felt  so  afeard  in  my  life,  and  I  have  been  a 
changed  man  ever  since.'  Be  it  known,  gentle 
reader,  I  am  naturally  reverent  of  age,  and  the 
utmost  I  could  remember  saying  was,  that  I 
hoped  that  as  their  heads  whitened,  their  faith 
brightened,  and  as  all  else  grew  dim  to  their 
old  eyes,  their  Saviour's  face  and  their  Father's 
home  grew  clearer;    so   I   can   only   suppose    it 


56  WORK  AMONG    WORKING-MEN, 

was  the  strength  of  the  impression  I  made 
which  clothed  itself  in  such  terrific  words. 

A  lady  friend  of  mine  who  had  won  the  next 
place  in  his  heart  to  myself,  greatly  delighted 
him  by  presenting  him  with  her  photograph.  He 
came  in  from  the  neighbouring  village,  where  his 
small  farm  was  situated,  to  tell  me  that  he  had 
had  it  framed :  '  And  I've  hoonged  her  up  next 
Mr.  Spurgin  ;  and  the  neighbours  they  come  in 
and  they  say,  "Well,  they  du  look  beautiful ! '" 

This  same  friend  of  mine  was  the  only  one, 
after  they  had  lost  their  first  friend,  the  clergy- 
man's wife,  who  at  all  took  her  place  by  my 
side  in  their  affections,  and  who  on  the  rare 
occasions  she  could  leave  her  own  work  to  take 
mine,  managed  to  speak  home  to  their  inmost 
hearts.  *  You  see.  Miss,  her  words  do  weigh  so 
heavy  on  the  system,'  as  a  working-man  said 
to  me.  One  young  man,  a  wild,  thoughtless 
fellow,  became  entirely  changed  under  her  in- 
fluence, and  his  sister  exclaimed  to  her,  with 
earnest  thankfulness,  '  There's  our  Jem,  he  didn't 
even  believe  in  the  devil.  But  oh.  Miss,  he  do 
believe    in    him    now  since    he    has    heard  you 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.  57 

preach  him.*  If  there  was  a  weak  point  in  my 
friend's  theology,  I  fear  it  was  the  personality 
of  the  evil  spirit,  so  the  assurance  was  doubly 
satisfactory  to  her. 

We  both  met  with  the  most  curious  instances 
of  the  way  in  which,  as  in  ancient  prophesying, 
we  were  able  to  '  make  manifest  the  secrets '  of 
the  hearts  before  us.  On  one  occasion  my  friend 
said,  *  There  are  some  of  you  young  men  who 
think  so  lightly  of  coming  into  the  presence  of 
your  God  in  this  meeting,  that  as  you  stood 
outside  the  door  you  actually  tossed  up  whether 
you  would  come  in  here  or  go  to  yonder  public' 
A  group  of  young  men  sitting  right  in  front  of 
her,  and  who  had  come  in  late,  had  actually 
done  so,  and  received  the  ghostly  guidance  of 
'tails'  to  decide  them  to  hear  the  gospel  in 
preference  to  drinking  in  the  public-house.  On 
another  occasion,  I  said,  *  There  are  you  men  out 
there,' — pointing  in  their  direction, — '  you  know 
you  have  been  sitting  in  the  public-house  drink- 
ing up  to  the  last  moment.  And  one  of  you 
looked  up  at  the  public-house  clock,  and  said, 
**  Come,  let's  be  off  to  hear  the  lady  preach,  or 


S8  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

we  sha'n't  get  a  seat.'"  Without  knowing  It,  I 
described  a  scene  which  had  really  taken  place, 
and  the  man  who  had  pointed  to  the  clock  and 
uttered  the  identical  words,  was  so  impressed 
at  being  thus  ^judged  of  all,'  that  he  became 
from  that  day  an  earnest-hearted  man.  At 
times  it  produced  no  small  awkwardness ;  a 
man  would  go  to  another,  and  accuse  him  in 
great  wrath  of  having  told  the  lady  all  about 
him ;  and  I  had  to  step  in  and  clear  the  sup- 
posed tale-bearer  with  the  assurance  that  he 
had  never  mentioned  the  other's  name. 

But  I  soon  found  that  you  can  make  but 
very  little  way  with  ignorant  minds  by  mere 
preaching.  The  '  after  meeting,'  which  has  since 
grown  so  common,  to  which  those  who  were 
impressed  might  be  asked  to  stay,  and  in  which 
you  could  sit  down  on  a  bench  by  some  poor 
ignorant  fellow's  side,  and  patiently  get  at  his 
inarticulate  difficulties  and  sorrows,  and  talk  to 
him  in  plain  brotherly  fashion,  became  a  neces- 
sity. As  many  as  two  hundred  used  sometimes 
to  stay  behind.  We  used  to  open  it  by  prayer, 
in  which  those  who  were  anxious  to  lead  a  new 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.  59 

life  were  encouraged  to  make  their  first  con- 
fession of  faith  to  their  Father  and  their  Saviour. 
It  was  difficult  at  times  to  prevent  an  inward 
smile  at  the  quaint  simplicity  of  their  expres- 
sions; and  I  remember  my  heart  being  refreshed, 
but  my  gravity  somewhat  tried,  by  the  fervency 
with  which  one  man  prayed,  *  O  Lord,  bless  this 
here  woman  what  preaches.'  Prayer  being  con- 
cluded, the  whole  meeting  broke  up  into  groups 
of  earnest  talkers.  Here  again  you  must  depend 
on  the  number  and  earnestness  of  your  helpers, 
earnest  working-men  and  women  being  especially 
useful  in  this  part  of  the  work,  from  the  fact 
of  their  having  overcome  the  same  difficulties 
and  temptations  as  those  they  address.  Many 
a  fleeting  impression  was  riveted  for  time  and 
eternity,  by  being  taken  hold  of  at  once  in  the 
after  meeting,  and  stamped  in  by  earnest  brotherly 
talk  and  prayer. 

The  choice  of  door-keepers  too  is  very  im- 
portant. I  chose  out  two  of  the  most  gentle- 
manly and  good-looking  of  the  earnest  working- 
men  for  this  office ;  and  I  was  often  amused  at 
the    air    with    which    they    handed    some    poor 


6o  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

ragged  object,  fresh  from  the  public-house,  to 
his  seat,  with  as  much  deference  as  if  he  had 
been  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  himself. 
We  may  smile,  but  a  respectful  welcome  is 
never  lost  on  the  sensitive  pride  of  working- 
men. 

By  degrees  I  was  also  led  to  feel  the  absolute 
necessity  of  some  social  reforms  for  any  wide- 
spread good  to  be  effected.  'It's  nothing  of  a 
trade  since  this  here  woman  has  been  preaching,' 
a  publican  lamented  to  a  policeman.  But  all 
the  more  strongly  I  felt  the  need  of  some 
substitute  for  the  public-house.  We  too  often 
forget  that  men  in  that  rank  of  life,  however 
much  attached  to  their  homes,  require  the  society 
of  their  fellows  as  much  as  men  in  our  own 
rank,  some  place  in  which  they  can  see  the 
newspapers,  and  talk  trade  and  politics.  Their 
own  homes  are  too  small  to  allow  of  their  see- 
ing their  friends  in  them  as  we  do;  and  while 
the  public-house  formed  a  strong  public  opinion 
on  the  side  of  evil,  I  saw  the  men  who  had  been 
influenced  for  good  reduced  to  pious  units  in 
the   narrow   circle  of    their   own   homes.     So  by 


MEN  AND  WOMEN  6l 

my  dear  father's  influence,  and  by  his  giving  his 
scanty  leisure  from  scientific  pursuits  to  the 
labour  of  raising  funds,  a  Working-men's  Club 
and  Institute  was  built,  and  has  since  proved 
very  successful,  and  is  in  itself  a  protest  against 
prevailing  intemperance. 

It  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  enter  into  the 
causes  which  laid  me  aside  after  two  or  three 
years  in  an  illness  which  lasted  many  years, 
causes,  however,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with 
overwork ;  or  to  touch  on  the  reasons  which 
have  since  reluctantly  obliged  me  to  take  up 
other  work — work  not  of  my  own  choice,  but 
which  I  feel  has  a  greater  claim  on  me  as  a 
woman* 

Though  no  one  was  found  exactly  to  take 
up  my  work,  I  learnt  that  God  'fulfils  Himself 
in  many  ways.'  Earnest  men  and  women  have 
devoted  their  lives  to  those  back  streets  and 
lanes  and  alleys;  and  the  suburb  where  I 
laboured  has  realized  the  wish  of  an  Irish 
speaker,   embodied    in    an    irresistible   pun,   that 

*  See  *Work  in  Brighton;'  with  a  Preface  by  Florence 
Nightingale.     Twelfth  Edition.     Price  6d.     (Hatchards.) 


62  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

Barnwell  might  soon  become  Barnbetter.  For 
many  of  my  dear  friends  it  has  become  too  re- 
spectable, and  they  have  moved  on  to  another 
suburb ;  thus  awaking  in  my  mind  the  old  diffi- 
culty which  has  always  troubled  me  at  times, 
why  the  world  is  round.  If  it  had  only  a  brink, 
so  that  we  might  be  always  improving  the  hope- 
less ones  in  the  rear,  pushing  them  on  gently 
but  irresistibly,  till  if  they  positively  refused 
to  be  bettered,  w^e  might  improve  them  over 
the  edge,  out  of  a  world  which  no  longer  wants 
them.  As  it  is  we  too  often  push  our  worst 
snail  over  into  our  neighbour's  garden. 

But  even  in  this  sphere  that  has  no  limiting 
sides  to  it  perhaps  we  gain  the  best  image  of 
that  Love  which  has  no  end,  the  love  of  the 
Cross,  *  whose  breadth  is  charity,  whose  length 
is  eternity,  whose  height  is  omnipotence,  and 
whose  depth  is  unsearchable  wisdom.' 


CHAPTER  V. 


EVANGELIZATION. 


ET  me  now  dwell  a  little  more 
generally  on  some  social  questions 
which  especially  affect  the  welfare  of 
the  working  classes,  as  well  as  enter  a  little 
more  in  detail  on  the  best  general  means  of 
getting  hold  of  what  Dr.  Chalmers  used  to  call 
the  *  lapsed  classes/  the  masses  of  working-men 
and  women  who,  in  the  expressive  elliptical 
phrase  that  has  coined  itself  for  the  occasion, 
'go  nowhere.' 

In  dealing  with  the  religious  difficulty,  the 
fact  that  so  many  working-men  go  to  no  place 
of  worship,  and  are  in  no  vital  union  with  any 
section  of  the  Christian  Church,  of  course  I 
shall  be  met  at  the  outset  with  the  current 
objection      of     comfortable      middle-class     wor- 


64  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

shippers,  that  there  are  plenty  of  churches  and 
chapels  open  now-a-days,  that  these  people  live 
within  the  sound  of  church  bells,  and  if  they 
go  nowhere  it  is  their  own  fault. 

There   is   a   little    paper    of    Nathanael    Haw- 
thorne's,   in    which    he    points    out    to     us     the 
immense    improvements   this   age   of    mechanical 
inventions   has    introduced    into    the    journey   to 
the   Celestial    City   since   Bunyan's    day.     Where 
the   original   wicket    gate    stood,    now    stands    a 
commodious   station,   where    each    pilgrim    takes 
his   ticket,  labelled   Anglican,  Methodist,  Baptist, 
etc.,   according   to    the    line    he    travels   on,   the 
Slough  of  Despond  having  been  long   ago  filled 
in  with  German    Rationalism  and  French  novels, 
and   bridged   over    by   modern    science,   for    the 
Celestial   'Bus   to    pass    to   and   fro ;    ApoUyon's 
services  have  been  engaged  as  stoker  and  engine- 
driver;    and    we     have     tunnelled     through     the 
Hill     Difficulty    and     filled     up     the    Valley    of 
Humiliation  with  the  debris  ;  only,  unfortunately, 
quite   at  the  last  the  writer's  mind    is   darkened 
with  a    doubt    whether  the   destination   is    quite 
the   same,  whether,   after  all,   we   shall   not  find 


EVANGELIZATION.  65 

ourselves  at  the  wrong  place.     But  it  strikes  me 
that   we   have    introduced    modern    improvements 
into  the   parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  as  well 
as    into     Bunyan's    dear    old-fashioned    allegory, 
of  quite    as    fatal,    though    of    a    less    extensive 
kind.     The    *  Good    Samaritan'    has    no    need   to  ^ 
get   off    his    beast    now-a-days,    and    go    to    the 
wounded  man  '  where  he  is ; '  least  of  all    to    go 
to  the  sensational   length   of  giving   up  his    own 
beast    to    him,  and  himself    trudging  laboriously 
on  foot;   he  contents  himself   with  the   reflection 
that    the    inn    is    close   by    where     he    can    get 
attended  to,  and  it  is  his  own  fault  if  he  doesn't 
go  to  it.     He  needn't  trouble  himself  any  longer 
with   the    question   whether,   as   he   is   half-dead, 
he   isn't  too  far  gone  to  care,  or  to  get  there,  \i 
he  did  care;  but  rides  on,  with   the   comfortable 
reflection  that  so  much  is  being   done  for  people 
of  his  class.     Only,  in  this  version  of  the  parable, 
one    cannot    help  asking  whether   the  Sam.aritan 
has   not    reverted    to    the    older   and   commoner 
type   of  his   race,   those   'who   feared   the    Lord, 
and  served  their  own  idols.'  / 

Is  it  the  fault  of  the  bed-ridden   cripple   that 

5 


66  IVORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

he  does  not  get  up  and  go  to  the  doctor  who 
lives  close  by ;  or  is  it  the  doctor's  fault  who 
leaves  him  to  perish  by  refusing  to  go  to  him  ? 
Is  it  not  just  the  malady  of  the  people  who, 
perhaps,  live  in  the  next  street  to  us,  that  their 
wills  are  bed-ridden,  that  they  cannot  rise  and 
come,  however  many  churches  we  may  open  for 
them  ?  Is  it  not  just  this  that  constitutes  their 
claim  to  our  help  ?  And  if  much  is  done  for 
them,  before  we  can  rest  satisfied,  does  not  the 
further  question  remain,  Is  it  done  rightly  ?  Is 
it  done  with  a  full  understanding  of  their  needs 
and  with  the  hearty  human  fellowship  and 
sympathy  of  man  to  man  ? 

For  I  go  one  step  further.  Are  our  Church 
services  adapted  to  them,  if  they  did  come  ? 
*  What,*  says  Edward  Denison,  who  went  and 
lived  among  the  working  people  in  the  East 
End  of  London, — *what  is  the  use  of  telling 
people  to  come  to  church  when  they  know  of 
no  rational  reason  why  they  should;  when,  if 
they  go,  they  find  themselves  among  people 
using  forms  of  words  which  have  never  been 
explained  to  them ;  ceremonies  performed  which, 


E  VANG  ELIZA  TION.  67 

to  them,  are  entirely  without  meaning;  sermons 
preached  which,  as  often  as  not,  have  no  mean- 
ing-, or,  when  they  have,  a  meaning  inteUigible 
only  to  those  who  have  studied  religion  all  their 
lives  ? '  * 

To  us,  who  from  our  earliest  childhood  have 
been  familiar  with  the  Church  prayers,  no  service 
can  have  quite  the  same  hallowed  charm.  The 
venerable  forms,  the  occasional  obsolete  words, 
the  archaic  modes  of  expression,  are  all  to  us 
like  old  cathedral  stones  that  bear  the  weather- 
stains  of  centuries,  and  the  swallow's  nest  of 
yesterday,  beautiful  with  the  sorrows  and  adora- 
tions of  the  past,  yet  from  whence  the  fresh 
aspirations  of  to-day  take  heavenward  flight. 
But  do  we  realise  the  difficulties  they  may  pre- 
sent to  uneducated  minds,  to  whom  they  are 
unfamiliar  and  unhallowed  by  association }  I 
remember  having  this  forcibly  brought  home 
to  me  by  a  working-man  who  became  an  earnest 
Christian  through  my  mission  services.  This 
man   had  not  been  in  any  place  of  worship  for 

*  Letters  and  Other  Writings  of  the  late  Edward  Denison, 
p.  39. 


68  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

eighteen  years, — I  do  not  mention  it  as  any- 
thing particularly  unusual, — but  as  soon  as  he 
had  got  a  decent  suit  of  clothes  he  went  to  the 
parish  church.  From  his  first  church-going  he 
came  away  in  a  state  of  the  profoundest  bewilder- 
ment, and  going  straight  to  a  friend  of  mine, 
he  asked  her,  '  Ma^am,  what  is  that  we  says  in 
church  when  we  all  bow  our  'eads  ?  Who  was 
that  feller,  Pontius  Pilate,  who  went  down  into 
'ell  ?  and  I  did  think  when  a  chap  once  went 
there  he  never  comed  up  again  the  third  day.'- 
Yet  this  man  was  an  intelligent  fellow  enough, 
only  give  him  time  to  rub  off  the  rust  of 
his  wild  and  uncared-for  life  ;  and,  though  I 
don't  think  he  ever  got  over  the  moral  shock 
of  that  unlooked-for  coming  up  of  Pontius 
Pilate  from  the  place  of  perdition,  or  took  to 
the  Church  service  after  it,  he  certainly  be- 
came a  thoughtful  and  consistent  member  of  a 
chapel. 

But  apart  from  our  Church  service  not  being 
adapted  for  a  Mission-service,  the  great  clothes 
difficulty  will  always  block  the  way  in  any 
regular  church  or  chapel  with  a  well-clad  middle- 


E  VANGELIZA  TION,  69 

class  congregation.*  The  ordinary  working-man, 
who  goes  to  no  place  of  worship,  has,  generally 
speaking,  no  suit  of  'Sunday  best;'  often  enough 
he  has  only  '  the  clothes  he  stands  upright  in  ; ' 
not  infrequently,  in  his  own  expressive  verna- 
cular, he  has  drunk  the  shirt  off  his  back,  and 
it  is  simply  impossible  to  get  him  at  once  to 
form  part  of  a  well-dressed  congregation.  He 
feels  himself  a  fustian  patch  on  all  that  silk  and 
broad-cloth.  The  difficulty  presses  heavily 
enough  on  even  a  Mission-service,  without  any 
need  to  add  to  it ;  and  long  ago,  had  my  sex 
permitted  it,  it  would  have  reduced  me  to  acting 
on  the  energetic  utterance  of  a  minister  at  the 
London  Conference  of  clergy  and  working-men, 
*  If  it  is  clothes  that  are  your  difficulty,  I  will 
preach  the  gospel  to  you  in  my  shirt-sleeves 
any  day.'  It  even  evolves  itself  out  of  one's 
very     success ;      what     the     connexion     between 

*  It  must  be  understood  that,  in  these  papers,  I  am 
speaking  of  the  lower  substratum  of  working-men,  siich  as 
exist  in  every  town,  not  of  respectable  mechanics,  nor  of 
the  large  and  increasing  body  of  total  abstainers, — a  great 
proportion  of  whom  are  absorbed  in  various  Christian  deno- 
minations. 


70  WO/^Jir  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

Christianity  and  broad-cloth  is  I  know  not,  it 
is  hidden  in  the  mystery  which  besets  the  caiisal 
nexus  in  general ;  but  it  must  be  a  vital  one. 
In  my  own  Mission-service  conversion  was  always 
marked  by  a  suit  of  black.  And  nothing  but 
the  excessive  crowding,  which  hid  all  individual 
shortcomings,  especially  about  the  nether  man, 
kept  the  dread  of  my  heart  from  being  realised, 
of  growing  too  respectable. 

Such  being  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome, 
if  ever  the  Church  is  to  regain  her  lost  ground 
with  the  people,  it  can  only  be  by  having  some 
simpler  shorter  service  especially  adapted  to 
their  wants,  and  forming  a  nursery-ground  for 
both  church  and  chapel.  Let  them  be  planted 
down  at  regular  intervals  in  the  poorer  neigh- 
bourhoods, and  held  in  school-rooms  or  any 
large-enough  room  that  offers  itself.  Let  each 
parish  or  congregation  have  its  Mission-service 
— as  much  part  of  its  regular  machinery  as  its 
district-visiting,  its  Sunday-schools,  its  Bible- 
classes,  etc. — and  let  it  be  as  carefully  organised 
and  worked ;  and  we  should  soon  see  a  marked 
change  for  the  better  in  our  people.    Those  who 


E  VANGELIZA  TION.  7 1 

are  aware  of  the  remarkable  work  of  evangeliza- 
tion that  is  going  on  in  Paris  among  the 
working-classes  by  means  of  small  earnest  gather- 
ings, held  in  almost  every  street,  in  the  face 
of  all  the  difficulties  presented  by  Roman 
Catholicism,  the  religious  apathy  of  the  people, 
and  the  law  that  forbids  the  assembling  together 
for  Protestant  worship  of  more  than  twenty 
people,  know  all  that  may  be  effected  by  this 
agency  if  made  an  earnest  and  thorough  use  of, 
and  not  treated  in  the  slipshod  manner  it  too 
often  is. 

The  service  must  be  held  on  Sunday.  Week- 
day services  are  little  or  no  use  for  purposes 
of  evangelization.  The  very  men  who  want  it 
most,  the  careless  and  indifferent,  are  much  too 
tired  after  their  day's  work  to  care  to  come  to  a 
religious  service,  which  has  no  attractions  for 
them.  And,  besides,  so  unusual  a  proceeding 
exposes  them  to  being  unmercifully  *  chaffed,' 
and  therefore  requires  extra  moral  courage.  It 
should  be  held  on  Sunday  evening, — not  the 
afternoon,  when  the  men  often  lie  down  and  have 
a  sleep, — or  at  any  rate  not  earlier  than  half-past 


72  WOJ^J^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

three.  And  it  should  not  be  reduced,  as  mine 
was,  to  an  inconvenient  hour  from  fear  of  inter- 
fering with  church  hours.  Church  hours  are  not 
interfered  with  in  the  case  of  those  who  never 
go  to  church."  We  have  made  our  '  church 
hours  '  Molochs  long  enough,  to  which  the  souls 
of  our  people  have  been  sacrificed.  The  service 
itself  may  consist  of  the  General  Confession, 
Thanksgiving,  and  Lord's  Prayer — three  hymns, 
if  possible  with  choruses  for  those  who  can't  read 
to  follow,  a  very  few  verses  of  the  Bible,  not  a 
whole  chapter — an  address,  and  a  short  extem- 
porary prayer,  the  whole  lasting  not  more  than 
an  hour.  Everything  should  be  short,  prompt, 
and  hearty,  with  no  di'agging,  and  plenty  of 
variety. 

And  now  as  to  the  speaking,  the  most  impor- 
tant point,  and  always  the  difficult  one. 

In  the  first  place  it  must  be  good,  simple, 
hearty,  and  to  the  point.  The  Mission-service 
must  not  be  trusted  to  the  first  raw  curate  or 
earnest  lay  stick  who  offers — men  to  whom  the 
incumbent  of  the  parish  would  never  think  of 
entrusting  his  own  pulpit,  knowing  that  he  would 


EVANGELIZATION.  73 

empty  his    church    if   he   did.     The    clergy  must 
disabuse  themselves  once  for  all  of  the  idea  that 
anything  will  do  for  these  poor  people — they  are 
so  ignorant.     Anything  will  not   do  for  working- 
men.      The    more    ignorant    they    are,    the    less 
accustomed    to    reHgious    forms    of    speech,    the 
better  speaking  they  require,  the  greater  the  art 
needed  in  the  speaker  to  address  them  effectively. 
Suitable  commonplaces  will   emphatically  not  go 
down  with  them.     They  require  good  strong  racy 
speaking,  and,  above  all,  stamped  with  the  utmost 
reality — no    fighting    with    'extinct    Satans,'    no 
religious  phraseology,  no  fossilized  dogmas.     The 
brawny  blacksmith  who,  wrestling  in  prayer,  and 
much  perplexed  in  heart  at  the  strength  of  evil, 
cried  out,  '  O  Lord,  the  devil  is   so  strong ;    but 
Thou  art  stronger ;  knock  him  down,  O  Lord  !     O 
Lord,  in  Thy  great  goodness,  knock  him  down ! ' 
is  no  bad  type  of  the  earnestness  and  directness 
and  straight-hitting    a    speaker    to   working-men 
needs,  that   speaking    out   of   the    heart  and  the 
life,  to  which  they  never  fail  to  respond. 

Only,   as    old  Gurnall  says,    he    must    not    be 
*fed  with  a  spoon  too    large   to    go    in  at    his 


74  WORJ^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

mouth,'  with  long  words  which  he  cannot  possibly 
understand. 

It  is  a  curious  and  most  uncomfortable  anomaly 
that  the  language  chosen  to  convey  eternal  realities 
is  the  most  unreal  and  Latinised  language  there 
is, — language  in  which  it  would  never  occur  to  us 
to  address  one  we  love,  or  obtain  the  necessaries 
of  existence,  or  do  any  of  the  real  work  of  life. 
Pulpit  English  is  the  most  vicious  English  in 
existence.  I  have  myself  heard  a  clergyman 
instinctively  do  into  Latin  the  Saxon  account 
of  the  Demoniac  in  St.  Mark,  '  There  met  Him 
a  man  coming  out  of  the  tombs,*  which  in  the 
course  of  his  remarks  he  rendered,  'They  were 
immediately  encountered  by  an  individual  pro- 
ceeding from  the  tombs ;  *  and  I  have  heard 
another  clergyman  inform  his  congregation  of 
village  clodhoppers  that  '  our  Lord  did  not  in- 
dulge in  nugatory  predictions,'  by  way  of  bringing 
home  to  them  that  He  is  the  faithful  and  true. 
During  the  Irish  famine,  the  shifts  the  clergy 
were  reduced  to  to  avoid  any  indecorous  mention 
of  the  potato  in  the  pulpit  were  curious,  though 
why  a  potato  should  be  more  profane  than  the 


E  VANGELIZA  TlOISf.  75 

*  hyssop  on  the  wall  '•  I  cannot  conceive,  since  the 
same  God  made  them  both.  Some  called  it  *  the 
succulent  esculent ; '  others  alluded  distantly  tc 
it  as  '  that  useful  edible  which  forms  so  important 
a  staple  of  food  ; '  while  only  one  Irish  clergy- 
man was  found  who,  in  a  kind  of  Celtic  reaction, 
courageously  informed  his  congregation  that  their 
contributions  had  provided  thirty  starving  families 
with  *good  Irish  stoo/ 

Now,  cannot  we  speak  to  the  people  in  the 
English  in  which  Tennyson  and  Wordsworth 
write  ?  Does  it  show  any  real  culture  to  say, 
'  Ere   you    resign   yourself  to   repose,'   instead   of 

*  Before  you  go  to  bed '  ?  Cannot  we  call  a 
spade  a  spade,  and  not  'an  agricultural  instru- 
ment '  ?  Not  so  very  long  ago  I  heard  an 
address  in  a  Mission-service  of  the  very  poorest, 
from  a  speaker  appointed  by  a  clergyman,  which 
began  thus:  'The  note,  my  fellow-townsmen,  I 
mean  to  strike  to-night  is  one  of  expostulation,* 
and  the  discourse  went  on  to  allude  to  the 
transit  of  Venus,  which  the  people  probably  set 
down  as  some  new  kind  of  cheese,  or  the  last 
superfine  tea, — the  worthy  speaker  was  a  grocer 


76  WORJC  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

by  worldly  calling, — and  ended  with  a  good  thick 
layer  of  doctrine,  which  might  have  been  living 
at  some  remote  geological  period,  probably  before 
man  had  made  his  appearance  on  the  earth,  but 
which  so  far  as  having  any  vital  connexion  with 
heart,  life,  or  conscience  might  have  been  dug 
out  of  the  old  red  sandstone.  As  the  long 
words  rolled  out,  I  was  irresistibly  reminded  of 
a  medical  man  in  the  north  who  was  noted  for 
his  Johnsonian  English.  Having  on  one  occa- 
sion to  prescribe  for  a  dying  labourer,  he  sent 
him  a  draught,  labelled  *to  be  taken  in  a  recum- 
bent posture.'  As  to  what  this  might  be  the 
relatives  of  the  dying  man  were  utterly  at  fault. 
They  sent  over  to  the  linen-draper,  to  know  if 
he  had  a  recumbent  posture.  No,  he  had  never 
heard  of  such  a  thing.  Perhaps  it  might  be 
something  in  the  bladder  line.  Did  the  butcher 
chance  to  have  one }  No,  he  had  never  heard 
of  such  a  thing  either.  At  last,  they  worked 
their  way  round  to  an  old  woman,  who  never 
would  allow  herself  at  fault  in  anything.  So  she 
said,  '  Yes,  she  had  one ;  but,  most  unfortunately, 
she  had  just  lent  itl' 


EVANGELIZATION.  77 

Now,  my  one  advice  to  speakers  at  Mission- 
services  is,  like  the  old  woman,  to  lend  or  sell 
their  '  recumbent  postures/  and  speak  good  plain 
English.  And  if  good  effective  speaking  does 
not  come  to  them  by  nature,  like  Dogberry's 
reading  and  writing,  why  not  study  those  who 
are  masters  of  the  art,  the  well-known  preachers 
of  the  day,  who  have  gained  the  ear  of  the 
people  ?  Why  not  read  some  of  the  old  Puritan 
writers — Gurnall,  Brooks,  Flavel,  etc. — for  racy, 
powerful  thoughts,  or  Spurgeon's  '  Commentary 
on  the  Psalms/  especially  prepared  for  village 
preachers,  or  Eugene  Stock's  *  Lessons  on  the 
Life  of  our  Lord.' 

Perhaps  you  say  you  don't  like  the  theology 
of  the  old  Puritans  or  Spurgeon.  What  does 
that  matter }  You  may  equally  learn  from  their 
way  of  putting  things ;  you  may  borrow  their 
pitcher,  even  though  you  may  fill  it  higher  up 
the  stream  where  you  think  the  water  flows 
clearer.  Good  speaking  needs  learning,  at  least 
as  much  as  making  shoes.  And  if  some  good 
folk  are  inclined  to  say,  '  God  does  not  want  our 
learning/  still  less,  I   would   urge,  does  He  want 


78  WORK-  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

our  laziness,  if  the  Divine  fire  must  come  from 
above, — and  no  one  can  lay  more  stress  than  I 
do  that  spiritual  power  is  essentially  supernatural, 
and  must  be  won  by  prayer  and  self-surrender  to 
God, — yet  the  fuel  must  come  from  below,  not 
without  much  digging  and  hewing. 

I  believe  that  one  reason  why  working-men,  as 
a  rule,  prefer  the  speaking  of  ladies,  why  they 
can  always  be  got  hold  of  at  least  in  some 
measure  by  that  agency  when  all  others  have 
failed,  is  in  part  that  women  never  wrong  their 
thoughts  with  pulpit  English,  but  preserve  the 
strength  and  sweetness  of  their  mother  tongue  ; 
and  that  they  speak  not  from  theological  systems, 
but  from  the  heart  and  the  life,  and  from  that 
deep  understanding  of  the  wants  of  the  people, 
which  comes  from  close  and  loving  contact  of 
their  woman's  heart  with  theirs. 

But  till  we  learn  like  our  Master  to  give  the 
working-men  our  best,  and  not  merely  the  leav- 
ings of  our  middle-class  congregations,  till  we 
carefully  search  out  the  best  speakers  for  the 
Mission-service,  without  regard  to  the  possibility 
of  the  susceptibilities  of  excellent  Mr.  Dryasdust 


E  VANG  ELIZA  TIOJST,  79 

being  wounded  by  his  being  passed  over, — in  one 
word,  till  the  good  of  the  working-men  becomes 
our  first  thought,  tJey  will  never  be  won,  the 
Mission-service  will  consist,  as  it  so  often  does, 
of  a  few  harmless  old  women ;  and  those  ribs  of 
death,  empty  benches,  will  everywhere  protrude 
to  prove  that  it  is  not  a  living  thing. 

Good  speaking  alone,  however,  is  not  enough. 
A  Mission-service,  to  be  effective,  as  I  have 
already  said,  should  be  carefully  organized,  ^Ise 
the  best  speaker  is  only  a  head  without  limbs. 
Not  only  does  it  need  a  body  of  earnest  helpers 
to  create  an  atmosphere  of  prayer  and  fervour, 
as  well  as  to  follow  up  any  who  are  impressed, 
either  at  the  after-meeting  or  at  their  own  homes, 
but  the  task  of  bringing  the  people  in  ought  to 
belong  to  them.  The  Mission-service  has  fortu^ 
nately  no  church  bells  to  whose  cold  iron  throats 
we  can  depute  the  work  of  saying  '  Come,'  till 
we  almost  forget  how  to  say  it  with  our  tender 
human  throats,  beneath  which  beats  a  human 
heart.  The  district  visitors  and  a  certain  num- 
ber of  earnest  working-men  and  women  should 
meet  their  clergyman  once  a  month  in  connexion 


8o  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

with  the  Mission-service,  for  the  appointment  of 
speakers, — if  there  be  no  one  effective  speaker 
who  will  undertake  it, — for  the  apportioning  of 
work,  for  hearing  of  any  cases  that  need  his 
own  visitation,  and  for  earnest  prayer.  The  dis- 
trict visitors  should  be  required  to  know  and 
report  what  men  and  women  in  their  district  go 
to  no  place  of  worship,  and,  if  possible,  to  see 
them  personally,  and  earnestly  invite  them  to  the 
Mission-service,  not  merely  leaving  a  message  for 
the  man  through  his  wife,  which  is  of  no  manner 
of  use.  And  the  back  streets  should  be  appor- 
tioned among  men  and  women  who  will  undertake 
to  go  round  on  the  Sunday  before  the  service 
and  personally  ask  the  people  to  come,  promising 
to  be  there  to  meet  them,  and  give  them  a 
welcoming  smile  ;  and,  in  the  case  of  some  poor 
shy  and  reluctant  fellows,  to  call  for  them  and 
go  with  them.  Many  a  man  will  be  too  shy  to 
come  alone,  who  will  gladly  come  with  another. 
I  used  to  tell  my  working-men,  *  Don't  stick  your 
arm  out  like  a  sign-post,  and  point  a  poor  fellow 
to  the  meeting ;  your  arm  and  mine  has  got  this 
bend    at    the    elbow,   on    purpose    that   it    may 


evangelization:  %i 

bring  our  lost  brother  to  Christ,  link  itself 
lovingly  in  with  his  in  true  brotherly  fashion,  and 
set  him  to  come  along  with  us.'  The  streets  should 
be  constantly  interchanged  at  the  monthly  meet- 
ing, so  that  the  invitation  may  come  from  a  fresh 
voice.  An  illustrated  leaflet,  with  an  invitation 
to  the  meeting  printed  in  red  ink  across  the 
letter-press,  forms  a  good  excuse  for  knocking 
at  the  door  and  asking  the  people  to  come. 

The  terrible  obstacle  to  the  effective  working 
of  this  vital  part  of  a  Mission-service  lies  in  that 
curious  anomaly  which  is  eating  out  the  heart 
of  our  middle-class  Christianity, — religious  selfish- 
ness. So  far  from  our  being  wiUing  to  lay  down 
our  lives  for  the  brethren,  we  are  often  not 
willing  to  lay  down  so  much  as  one  religious 
service,  to  give  up  one  meal  out  of  many  for 
the  sake  of  those  who  are  perishing  with  hunger 
so,  while  the  church  is  crowded,  the  Mission- 
service  is  too  often  left  with  only  one  or  two 
to  help  it  with  their  presence  and  their  prayers. 
Here,  alas !  is,  I  fear,  the  root  of  the  sterility  of 
much  of  our  Christianity. 

But  in   the   difficult  work   of  getting  at  those 

6 


82  WORK-  AMONG    WORKING-MEN. 

who  are  untouched  by  church  or  chapel  we 
must  not  trust  to  any  one  agency.  No  one 
thing  will  do  the  work.  Fresh  agencies  must 
always  be  coming  in  and  taking  the  place  of 
those  that  are  getting  worn  out  through  the 
deadening  influence  of  habit. 

An  earnest  letter  from  the  clergyman  of  the 
parish,  or  from  the  habitual  speaker  at  the 
Mission-service,  printed,  but  enclosed  in  an  enve- 
lope,— for  the  poor  are  particularly  sensitive  to  any 
little  mark  of  respect  and  individual  considera- 
tion,— left  at  every  door  at  the  beginning  of  the 
winter's  work,  will  often  bring  many,  and  is  also  a 
source  of  communication  between  clergy  and  people. 

Singing  hymns  in  procession,  if  it  be  well  and 
reverently  done,  and  not  so  as  to  obstruct  the 
more  public  thoroughfares  when  the  authorities 
may  object,  forms  a  sweet  and  musical  peal  of 
church  bells  to  call  the  people  in.  No  one 
knows  the  full  beauty  of  that  grand  old  hymn, — 

*  Onward,  Christian  soldiers— onward, 
Marching  as  to  war,' 

till  they  have  pealed  it  out  under  the  winter  stars. 
But   one    of    the    most    effective,   yet    I    must 


EVANGELIZATION,  83 

confess  the  most  disagreeable  way  of  getting  at 
the  lowest  substratum,  which  must  always  be 
the  aim  and  end  of  a  Mission-service,  is  Saturday 
evening  public-house  visitation.  It  was  the  only 
part  of  my  work  to  which  I  never  could  over- 
come my  intense  repugnance  ;  but  1  would  urge 
it  on  any  one  who  is  endeavouring  to  reach  our 
home  heathen.  I  used  to  do  it  in  company 
with  another  lady  every  Saturday  evening, 
devoting  an  hour  and  a  half  to  it,  from  six  to 
half-past  seven  ;  later  than  eight  o'clock  it  would 
not  be  safe  for  ladies, — alas  that  it  should  be 
so  in  a  Christian  and  civilized  land ! — besides 
being  of  no  use,  that  terrible  law  of  reversion 
to  the  original  type — if  we  are  to  accept  Mr. 
Darwin's  theories  of  the  descent  of  man — which 
obtains  in  the  public-house,  having  taken  place 
at  any  later  hour,  the  man  having  gone  back 
to  the  larger  short-tailed  ape,  from  which  accord- 
ing to  the  great  naturalist  he  originally  sprang, 
deprived  of  God's  great  gift  of  speech  and 
reason.  But  even  at  the  earlier  hour  we  chose, 
it  was  by  no  means  pleasant.  We  used  to  call 
it  going  to  evening  service ;  the  men  are  generally 


84  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

in  that  initial  stage  of  drunkenness  which  makes 
a  man  awfully  religious.  The  sermons  I  have 
had  preached  to  me  in  the  public-house,  and 
always  on  the  two  texts,  the  shortness  of  human 
life  and  the  necessity  of  serving  God !  It  is 
not  pleasant  work,  but  speaking  from  my  own 
wide  experience,  I  can  only  positively  say  that 
ladies  may  trust  working-men  not  to  insult 
them  under  any  circumstances,  if  they  are 
making  an  effort  for  their  good.  I  cannot  quite 
promise  for  the  publicans,  as  probably  they  do 
not  consider  it  an  effort  for  their  good ;  but  I 
must  say  as  often  as  not  I  have  found  them  most 
civil  and  polite.  But  even  when  the  contrary,  if 
it  is  sharp  work,  it  is  also  short.  One  need 
only  stay  long  enough  to  give  out  a  few  papers, 
with  an  earnest  invitation  to  the  meeting.  But 
the  mere  sense  that  any  one  loves  them  and 
cares  about  them  enough  to  xome  like  the  good 
Samaritan  'where  they  are'  works  wonders,  and 
makes  them  think  that  there  must  be  some- 
thing in  it  after  all.  *  Blow'd  if  I  don't  come 
and  see  what  it  is  like  for  myself,'  as  a  working- 
man  said  in  answer  -to  one  of  my  invitations. 


E  VANGELIZA  TION,  85 

A  free  tea  might  be  given  once  a  year  to 
the  men  who,  being  out  at  work  all  day,  and 
altogether  removed  from  contact  with  clergy 
or  district  visitor,  cannot  be  got  at  otherwise, — 
a  free  tea,  with  much  hymn-singing  of  a  loud 
cheerful  sort,  and  plenty  of  good  strong  speak- 
ing of  a  kind  that  remembers  Sydney  Smith's 
warning,  that  *  sin  is  not  got  out  of  a  man,  as 
Eve  was  out  of  Adam,  by  casting  him  into  a 
deep  sleep ; '  not  a  dreary  set-out  of  funereal 
meats,  with  which  our  people  are  too  often 
regaled,  but  hearty,  humorous  speaking,  that  is 
not  afraid  of  shaking  off  a  man's  stolid  indiffer- 
ence by  a  good  laugh,  leaving  him  twice  as 
ready  to  receive  the  graver  truths,  to  gain  an 
entrance  for  which  must  be  the  speaker's  real 
aim, — speaking  which  can  hide  a  good  deal  of 
straight  hitting  under  a  racy  humorous  saying. 
I  can  remember  once,  however,  hitting  a  little 
too  hard.  I  had  been  extremely  annoyed  at 
the  bestial  behaviour  in  the  public-house  of  some 
of  the  drinking  men  who,  I  knew,  were  present ; 
and  having  spoken  with  much  warmth  of  my 
love   for  working-men,   and  of    all   I   had  learnt 


86  WOJ^IC  AMONG   WORKING-MEISr. 

from  them,  I  couldn't  help  making  an  exception, 
and  saying,  that  there  was  one  place  where  I 
did  not  like  working-men  at  all,  and  that  was 
in  the  public-house.  '  Out  of  a  public-house  a 
working-man  always  knows  how  to  behave  to 
a  lady  ;  he  would  never  think  of  demeaning  him- 
self by  begging.  I'd  trust  myself  anywhere  else 
to  the  care  of  working-men.  But  in  the  public- 
house,  if  a  lady  ventures  in  and  gives  them  a 
few  papers,  or  asks  them  to  meet  her  on  a 
Sunday,  what  is  the  first  thing  they  have  to 
say  to  her }  "  Gi'e  us  twopence  for  a  pot  of 
beer."  Just  like,'  I  added,  with  some  asperity, 
'  a  pig  beginning  to  grunt  for  his  wash  the 
moment  you  approach  his  sty!'  Up  rose  a 
hoary-headed  doctor,  and  said,  *  I  think  that's 
rather  hard.'  He  paused.  There  was  a  sup- 
pressed stamping  of  feet  and  clapping  of  hands 
from  the  drinking  men, — then  he  went  on  in 
the  same  dry,  quiet  tone, — '  hard,  I  mean,  on  the 
pig'  Sudden  fall  of  countenance  in  the  audi- 
ence. *  Did  you  ever  see  a  pig  go  into  a  gin- 
shop  at  all  ."*  and  did  you  ever  see  a  pig  take 
a  drop  too   much  ?  and,  above  all,  did  you   ever 


E  VANG  ELIZA  TION.  87 

see  a  pig  go  home  and  knock  about  his  sow  ? ' 
This  last  question  proved  irresistible ;  a  roar 
of  laughter  greeted  it,  the  drinking  men  felt 
they  had  got  the  worst  of  it,  and  nine  of  them 
joined  the  temperance  club  that  night. 

Only  I  would  urge  that  free  teas  should  not  be 
used  as  a  regular  incentive  to  bring  the  people 
together  to  hear  the  gospel.  This  has  been  done 
in  the  East-end  of  London,  and  in  other  places, 
to  a  degree  that  has  disgusted  the  more  indepen- 
dent working-men  and  turned  them  against  religion. 
Our  Lord  fed  the  people  after  they  had  endured 
fatigue  and  hunger  to  hear  the  gospel ;  He  did 
not  feed  them  as  an  inducement  to  get  them  to 
hear.  Great  as  is  the  temptation  to  have  constant 
recourse  to  that  energetic  organ,  the  human 
stomach,  that  never  knows  any  religious  deadness, 
but  through  all  the  changes  and  chances  of  this 
mortal  life  makes  its  voice  heard  the  same,  I  can- 
not but  believe  a  systematic  appeal  to  the  animal 
appetites  must  be  debasing,  and  must  act  in  the 
nature  of  a  bribe,  making  the  very  ground  rotten 
under  one's  feet. 

In  addition  to  these  agencies  I  wish  we  made 


88  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

more  use  of  the  children  and  all  the  fatherly  love 
and  pride  which  lurks  in  a  working-man's  heart, 
even  where  it  seems  most  absent.  I  wish  the 
clergy  would  adopt  that  pretty  picturesque  custom 
which  still,  I  believe,  obtains  in  the  north,  of 
marching  all  the  Sunday-school  children  on  Whit- 
Sunday  in  bright  procession  through  the  streets, 
all  clad  in  their  Sunday  best,  with  banners  flying, 
and  singing  hymns  at  the  top  of  their  glad  young 
voices.  Surely  the  sight  of  all  those  round  and 
happy  faces  turned  heavenward,  the  way  of  life 
strewn  with  fresh  spring  flowers,  might  awaken 
many  a  heart  trodden  down  by  toil  and  monoto- 
nous days  from  its  sleep  of  indifference,  and  be  the 
glad  chimes  to  summon  together  a  large  gathering 
of  the  fathers  and  mothers  to  be  held  in  the 
church  after  service  time,  or  in  the  mission-room 
if  spacious  enough.  Why  should  there  be  so 
little  brightness  and  beauty  in  our  Protestantism, 
so  little  to  break  through  the  monotonous  ugli- 
ness of  back  streets } 

In  conclusion,  I  would  earnestly  point  out  what 
is  one  radical  defect  of  the  Church  of  England 
with  regard  to  the  working-man,  what  more  than 


EVANGELIZATIOA.  89 

even  her  long  words,  long  services,  and  pulpit 
English,  led  so  many  of  my  working-men  to 
leave  the  branch  of  the  Christian  Church  that 
had  called  them  to  Christ,  and  join  Dissenting 
bodies, — a  defect  which,  if  it  cannot  be  remedied, 
will  always  prevent  the  Established  Church  from 
being,  what  every  one  who  loves  her  services  must 
long  to  see  her,  the  Church  of  the  people.  The 
Church  of  England,  in  one  word,  gives  the  work- 
ing-man nothing  to  do.  He  feels  he  forms  no 
integral  part  of  her,  that  he  is  in  no  vital  con- 
nection with  her,  that  he  is  not  built  into  her 
structure,  but  is  left  a  loose  stone,  lying  about 
for  any  one  to  tumble  over.  Methodism,  on  the 
contrary,  lays  hold  of  him,  and  makes  him  her 
own.  He  becomes  a  local  preacher  or  a  tract 
distributor,  a  class  leader  or  a  Sunday-school 
teacher,  or  has  the  care  of  a  Band  of  Hope,  or 
works  in  connection  with  a  Mission-service,  or  the 
temperance  cause,  while  he  has  a  voice  in  the 
affairs  of  the  chapel  and  in  the  choice  of  his 
minister.  Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that,  as  a  rule, 
our  earnest  working-men  leave  the  church  and 
join  the  chapel  ? 


90  WORIC  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  this  vital  defect  in- 
fects all  the  relations  of  the  clergy  with  the 
working-man.  For  instance,  it  is  a  common  thing 
in  some  parishes  to  gather  together  the  fathers 
of  the  children  who  are  being  educated  in  the 
Church  schools  for  a  social  meal,  followed  by  a 
general  meeting.  I  was  present  at  one  such 
meeting,  where  there  were  some  four  to  five 
hundred  working-men.  Had  it  been  a  political 
meeting,  any  man  with  a  grievance  would  have 
felt  he  had  a  right  to  stand  up  and  speak  ;  a  good 
many  would  have  joined  in  with  some  rough  com- 
ments on  the  speeches  made,  possibly  greatly  to 
the  speaker's  embarrassment,  but  still  with  at 
least  the  admirable  result  of  making  the  men  feel 
that  the  political  institutions  of  their  country  are 
their  own,  that  they  have  a  voice  in  them  even 
when  they  have  no  vote,  that  the  member  who 
addresses  them  is  emphatically  their  member. 
But  as  it  was  only  a  meeting  got  up  by  the 
Church — the  Church  in  which,  in  theory  at  least,  a 
man  has  a  still  closer  ownership  than  in  the  State, 
the  Church  of  which  the  individual  stones  purport 
o   be   the  man    himself — not   one   of    those    five 


E  VANGELIZA  TION.  9 1 

hundred  men  were  expected,  or  allowed,  to  take 
the  smallest  part  in  the  meeting.  Some  four  or 
five  clergymen  addressed  them.  One,  being  a 
Scotciiman,  exhorted  them  to  form  habits  of 
scientific  observation,  and  collect  facts,  after  the 
example  of  Hugh  Miller,  while  his  hearers,  being 
very  ignorant,  were  probably  ransacking  their 
memories  to  try  and  recollect  what  part  of  the 
Bible  Hugh  Miller  came  in.  But  though  one  or 
two  spoke  admirably,  not  one  of  those  five  clergy- 
men ever  thought  of  saying  to  those  men,  *  Come 
now,  you  are  the  fathers  of  the  children  we  are 
educating  ;  you  stand  up  and  criticise  our  work. 
Let  us  have  your  opinion  on  it.  Tell  us  any  way 
•you  think  it  could  be  better  done.  How  do  you 
think  your  child  is  getting  on  t  How  do  you 
think  we  could  get  the  children  to  be  more 
regular }  We  are  trying  to  educate  them  for 
God ;  tell  us  where  you  think  we  fail,  and  how 
you  think  we  could  turn  out  better  work ' — so 
getting  the  men  to  feel  that  they  had  a  voice  in  it 
all,  and  clergy,  and  fathers,  and  teachers  were  all 
engaged  in  a  common  work.  No  ;  there  they  sat, 
as  dumb  as  sheep,  rows  and  rows  of  patient  buckets 


92  WORK'  AMONG   IVOR  KING- MEN". 

to  be  pumped  into.  One  man,  a  good  speaker,  told 
me  he  did  get  on  his  legs  to  move  a  vote  of  thanks, 
but  he  was  immediately  collared  by  a  church- 
warden, and  cold  water  thrown  on  his  laudable 
endeavour,  as  if  he  were  a  dangerous  explosive. 

Now,  I  can  only  say  that  this  kind  of  thing  will 
not  do  for  working-men.  If  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land will  insist  on  making  herself  an  exclusively 
aristocratic  institution,  where  only  broadcloth  is 
allowed  a  voice  and  a  work,  she  must  expect  to 
lose  the  democracy.  Yet,  surely  such  a  Church 
is  in  a  most  anomalous  position ;  recognizing  a 
Working-man  as  her  Lord  and  Head,  yet  tacitly 
excluding  working-men.  Surely  no  Christian 
Church  would  wish  to  find  her  prototype  in  a. 
tailor's  dog,  whose  master  assured  me  he  never 
would  lie  down  on  cloth  at  less  than  nine  shillings 
a  yard,  and  always  flew  at  fustian !  Must  not 
the  note  of  every  true  Christian  Church  be  that 
to  the  poor  the  Gospel  is  preached,  and  among 
her  evangelists  and  workers,  as  of  old,  are  some 
who  are  chosen  out  of  the  people  .-*  Working- 
men  are,  by  the  necessities  of  their  birth,  demo- 
cratic men,  and  as  men,  not  as  babies,  must  they 


EVANGELIZATION.  93 

be  treated.  They  stoutly  refuse  to  be  strapped 
up  in  ecclesiastical  perambulators  and  trundled 
along  the  way  of  salvation  by  either  lay  or  clerical 
nurses.  They  hate  ecclesiasticism  in  all  its  forms. 
But  let  the  clergy  treat  them  as  brother  men,  let 
them  give  them  their  two  great  desiderata,  work 
and  a  voice,  speak  to  them  in  plain  English, 
preach  to  them  the  human  Christ,  and  show  them 
hearty  human  fellowship,  and  they  will  find  no 
more  attached  members  of  the  Church  of  England 
than  they  would  become. 

Perhaps  I  shall  be  asked,  What  work  "i  Surely 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  finding,  now-a-days,  for 
every  man  his  work.  The  Church  of  England 
Temperance  movement,  with  the  Working-men's 
Clubs  and  Bands  of  Hope  that  should  belong  to 
it,  alone  affords  a  wide  field  for  work.  On  work 
in  connexion  with  Mission-services  I  have  already 
spoken.  Where,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  an 
earnest,  consistent  working-man  shows  himself  a 
good  speaker,  a  working-man's  mission  to  the 
neighbouring  villages,  with  tract  distribution, 
might  be  undertaken,  or  they  might  take  a  few 
back  streets  as  their  field  of  labour. 


94  IVOJ^A^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

Do  we  not  practically  ignore  the  fact  that  our 
Lord  chose  the  Apostles  of  the  world  mainly  from 
working-men  ;  that,  probably,  He  had  some  good 
reason  for  this  choice ;  and  that,  therefore,  an 
immense,  and,  so  far  as  the  Established  Church 
goes,  an  unused  evangelistic  power  may  be  hidden 
away  in  our  working-men  ?  Surely  it  would  be 
possible  to  organise  the  earnest  working-men  in 
every  parish,  and  give  them  Church-work,  and 
make  them  realise  their  Christian  priesthood. 

Another  valuable  agency,  in  which  the  help  of 
our  earnest  working-men  would  be  wanted,  and 
which  I  should  like  to  see  adopted  by  the  Church, 
is  Adult  Sunday-schools.  These  have  been 
turned  to  admirable  account  by  the  Society  of 
Friends.  An  Adult  Sunday-school  at  Birming- 
ham numbers  a  thousand  men,  meeting  at  half- 
past  seven  in  the  morning.  One  at  Hitchin 
numbers  some  three  hundred  men,  meeting  at 
half-past  two  in  the  afternoon.  Reading  and 
writing  are  taught,  the  lower  classes  by  working- 
men,  the  higher  by  educated  men  and  women. 
Many  a  man  who  is  too  tired  to  learn  on  the 
week  nights,  thankfully  embraces  the  opportunity 


EVANGELIZATION,  95 

presented  by  the  long  unoccupied  Sunday  hours, 
which  he  would  otherwise  have  spent  in  the  public- 
house.  The  school  concludes  with  a  short  reli- 
gious address  and  prayer.  I  trust  I  shall  not 
have  to  meet  any  objection  to  writing  being  taught 
on  the  Sunday.  As  a  grave  mild-eyed  Quaker 
replied  to  such  a  foolish  Judaizing  objector, 
'Friend,  does  thee  not  think  that  pot-hooks  are 
better  than  the  pot-house  on  the  Lord's  day }  ' 
When  a  man  has  written  six  times  down  in  his 
copy-book,  with  much  labour  of  his  horny  palms, 
and  much  unwonted  attitude  of  his  whole  person, 
*  Be  not  overcome  of  evil,  but  overcome  evil  with 
good  ; '  or,  '  No  drunkard  shall  inherit  the  king- 
dom of  heaven ; '  there  is  not  much  fear  of  his 
forgetting  that  text. 

At  Birmingham  the  movement  has  been  taken 
up  by  the  Dissenting  bodies,  thousands  of  work- 
ing-men being  thus  under  religious  and  secular 
instruction.  But  I  am  not  aware  of  the  Esta- 
blised  Church  having  adopted  this  valuable  agency. 

The  real  difficulty  lies  of  course  in  the  want  of 
workers,  our  earnest  capable  ones  being  already 
used    up    for    Sunday-schools    and    Bible-classes. 


96  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN 

But  surely  many  middle-class  men  would  under- 
take work  of  this  kind,  who  do  not  feel  at  all 
called  to  Sunday-school  teaching  or  district- 
visiting  ;  while  the  additional  Board-schools  would 
furnish  us  the  buildings,  hours  being  so  arranged 
that  the  school  might  adjourn  for  the  address,  as 
at  Hitchin,  to  some  more  spacious  building,  or 
perhaps  to  the  church  after  afternoon  service. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


SOCIAL    DIFFICULTIES. 


HAVE  often  been  struck  of  late  by  the 
truth  of  the  observation  made  by  one 
of  our  most  original  but  litcle-known 
thinkers,*  how  far  our  moral  faculties  have  lagged 
behind  our  intellectual ;  and  how  little  we  have 
as  yet  learnt  to  introduce  the  intellectual  methods 
into  our  moral  life,  to  act  on  the  same  methods 
as  we  think. 

At  the  very  time  I  was  conducting  my  moral 
experiment  with  my  rough  working-men,  my  dear 
father  was  conducting  some  scientific  experiments 
for  Government,  on  the  effect  of  pressure  on  heat. 
But  on  what  curiously  different  methods  we 
started !     To  have  a  due  regard  not  to  some,  but 

*  See  'Life  and  Letters  of  James  Hinton.  Edited  by 
Ellice  Hopkins.  With  an  Introduction  by  Sir  William  Gull.' 
Second  edition.     C.  Kegan  Paal  &  Co. 


98  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

to  all  the  facts,  to  see  everything  not  isolated, 
but  in  its  relations,  to  bring  every  conclusion  again 
to  the  test  of  facts — in  one  word,  accuracy  of 
regard,  this  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  modern 
science.  Had  my  father  only  attended  to  the 
small  class  of  facts  in  which  he  had  a  personal 
interest  as  telling  for  him,  and  tending  to  confirm 
some  mathematical  calculations  he  had  made,  not 
only  would  his  character  as  a  scientific  man  have 
been  destroyed,  but  such  a  procedure,  we  see  at 
once  in  the  intellectual  life,  would  lead  to  disaster 
and  certain  wrong  result.  But  though  this  is  often 
precisely  what  we  do  in  the  moral  life,  attending 
only  to  the  small  class  of  facts  that  make  for  our 
own  self-interest,  and  disregarding  all  others,  it  is 
not  as  clearly  recognized  that  this  must  lead  to 
disaster  and  wrong  result  there  as  well  as  in  our 
intellectual  life.  As  long  as  we  regard  a  few 
abstract  moral  laws,  as  long  as  we  try  and  love 
God,  and  pay  our  debts,  and  speak  the  truth,  and 
don't  take  things  that  do  not  belong  to  us,  we 
think  we  may  centre  our  lives  as  much  as  we 
like  about  ourselves,  and  the  facts  that  belong 
especially   to   us,   and  leave  out  of  consideration 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  99 

the  facts  of  the  lives  of  others  as  that  which  does 
not  concern  us.  We  do  not  recognize  that  we 
must  live  in  some  sort  of  relation  with  the  lives 
in  the  next  back  street ;  that  our  moral  world, 
humanity  itself,  is  as  much  an  organic  whole 
as  the  physical  world  of  science,  of  which 
every  part  is  dependent  on  every  other ;  and 
in  which,  therefore,  any  element  left  out  must 
produce  wrong  result  or  moral  disorder.  So  far 
from  recognizing  this,  we  look  upon  a  regard  to 
the  facts  of  the  poorer  lives  around  us,  as  a  sort  of 
superfluous  goodness  which  it  may  be  very  nice 
to  have,  but  which  the  majority  of  people  may 
be  excused  for  being  wholly  without.  '  I  have  no 
taste  for  that  kind  of  thing,'  is  the  usual  remark, 
without  any  of  that  sense  of  shame  which  a 
scientific  man  would  feel  in  allowing  that  he  was 
habitually  violating  the  very  conditions  of  in- 
tellectual order.  Yet  Christianity  has  but  one 
voice,  not.  Save  your  own  soul,  not.  Take  care  of 
your  own  goodness, — but,  love,  have  a  response  to 
every  claim  upon  you  whether  of  God,  of  your 
own  soul,  or  of  others  ;  take  in  all  the  facts,  corre- 
late  your   own   life   to   the   lives  around  you,  be 


loo  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEJST. 

serving  them  directly  or  indirectly.  How  is  it 
we  put  aside  this  voice,  and  so  often  substitute 
for  it  the  traditions  of  men  ?  We  know  that 
nothing  will  do  instead  of  truth  to  fact  in  our 
intellectual  life  ;  but  we  think  that  other  things 
— domestic  virtues,  punishments,  poor  laws,  culture 
— will  do  instead  of  love,  which  is  the  truth  to 
fact  of  the  moral  world. 

/  And  so  it  comes  to  pass,  that  side  by  side  with 
that  magnificent  intellectual  order  which  we  call 
modern  science,  with  its  ever-widening  achieve- 
ments, there  rises  up  the  intolerable  disorder  of 
our  moral  and  social  life.  The  left-out  elements 
spread  confusion  and  wrong  through  the  whole. 
The  vast  outcast  class  of  lost  women  and  children 
which  exists  at  the  very  heart  of  our  Christian 
civilizations,  and  whom  we  pure  and  educated 
Christian  women  carefully  shutter  and  curtain  out 
of  our  homes  and  very  thoughts,  corrupts  our  own 
sons,  debases  our  manhood,  poisons  our  national 
health,  and  degrades  our  legislation.  Our  selfish 
absorption  in  our  own  interests,  caught  up  and 
echoed  by  the  working  classes,  gives  rise  to  a 
strife  between  labour  and  capital  which  perpetually 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  loi 

threatens  our  trade,  and  engenders  hatred  and 
bitterness ;  while  the  huddled-up  Hves  in  our 
courts  and  back  streets  originate  the  germs  of 
disease  which  visit  impartially  the  rich  man's 
house  and  the  poor  man's  hovel,  and  indirectly 
give  rise  to  drunkenness  and  crime,  which  burden 
us  with  heavy  calendars  and  poor-rates,  and  darken 
and  sadden  our  moral  world.  "^ 

And  so  also  it  was  that,  brought  up  as  we  all 
are  more  or  less  to  disregard  the  facts  of  the  lives 
of  others,  and  have  our  eyes  turned  inward  to 
certain  great  moral  principles  and  religious  truths, 
rather  than  outward  to  the  conditions  which  must 
determine  the  application  and  working  of  those 
principles  and  truths,  my  father  and  I  worked  at 
our  two  experiments  on  wholly  different  methods. 
While  he  was  not  content  with  laying  down  some 
great  well-known  physical  laws,  and  then,  finding 
the  facts  not  in  accordance  with  them,  laying  the 
blame  on  the  disorder  of  the  physical  world  and 
the  corruption  of  the  universe,  but  patiently  set 
to  work  to  find  out  the  disturbing  causes,  I  found 
myself  preaching  the  great  truths  of  Christianity, 
and  the  fundamental  principles  of  morality,  very 


102  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEJSr. 

much  surprised  at  the  wrong  results  I  came  to  in 
the  lives  of  my  hearers,  but  never  giving  a  glance 
to  the  disturbing  causes,  or  patiently  searching 
out  the  unrecognized  influences  which  were  shap- 
ing those  lives  to  evil.  I  am  well  aware  that  there 
is  an  arbitrary  element  in  the  moral  world,  in  'the 
unruly  wills  and  affections  of  sinful  men,'  which 
there  is  not  in  the  physical  world  ;  but  that  does 
not  excuse  us  from  the  additional  disorder  and 
confusion  we  bring  in  by  not  recognizing  the  true 
method  that  might  reduce  much  of  the  arbitrary 
element  to  the  necessity  which  is  perfect  freedom, 
of  moral  law,  of  righteousness  and  holiness ;  by 
not  recognizing  the  right  aim,  by  not  training  our 
moral  emotions  by  every  gift  of  divine  grace, 
every  human  endeavour,  first  of  all  to  respond  to 
every  legitimate  claim,  and  then  to  take  in  all 
the  facts  which  must  determine  the  form  of  the 
response  in  action ;  by  not  endeavouring  to  see 
things  in  their  relations  in  the  world  of  conduct, 
as  well  as  in  the  world  of  science  and  intellect, 
and  get  rid  of  the  non-regard  *  out  of  our  moral 

*  I  follow  Mr.  Hinton's  example  in  using  this  rather  out- 
landish word,  as  being  the  only  word  common  to  both  the 


SOCIAL   DIFFICULTIES.  103 

life,  as,  since  the  rise  of  inductive  science,  we  have 
already  got  rid  of  it  out  of  our  intellectual  life. 

Accordingly,  in  my  first  efforts  to  live  in  some 
sort  of  helpful  relation  with  these  rough  men 
around  me,  I  found  myself  in  the  position  of  a 
child  who  goes  on  perpetually  doing  a  sum  which 
is  copied  down  wrong,  and  perpetually  comes  to 
a  wrong  result ;  while  the  great  Master  was  ever 
saying  to  me,  *  Look,  my  child,  look,  see  if  the 
conditions  are  right'  At  length,  by  dint  of  much 
suffering  over  wrong  results,  I  began  to  open  my 
eyes  and  look  at  the  facts  of  these  men's  lives, 
and  to  feel  the  absolute  necessity  of  some  social 
reforms  before  any  wide-spread  good  could  be 
effected.  It  was  not  much  use  preaching  that 
their  bodies  were  temples  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
when  the  outer  courts  of  that  temple  were  the 
public-house  every  Saturday  night.  It  is  up-hill 
work  inculcating  thrift  and  saving  habits  on  our 
English  working-men,  when  they  have  no  greater 

intellectual  and  moral  life,  denoting  want  of  truth  and 
accuracy  in  the  one,  and  selfishness  in  the  other,  selfishness 
being  not  a  positive  thing,  but  simply  not  looking,  not 
regarding  any  facts  but  those  that  personally  regard  us. 


104  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

inducements  to  save  than  two-and-a-half  per  cent., 
or  the  risks  of  a  but  too  often  insolvent  benefit- 
club,  with  the  forfeiture  of  parish  relief  as  an  ad- 
ditional stimulus  to  those  whose  aims  and  tradi- 
tions are  low.  It  is  mockery  to  enforce  chastity, 
and  decent  habits,  and  reverence  for  womanhood, 
on  those  who  are  huddled  up  like  pigs  in  one 
room  every  night. 

It  is,  therefore,  on  these  social  questions  that  I 
want  to  offer  a  few  remarks  and  suggestions  before 
concluding  these  notes  on  work. 

First  in  order  comes  the  great  drinking  question. 
My  experience  was  the  same  as  that  of  every 
other  worker,  that  the  public-house  is  the  open 
grave  of  all  our  efforts  for  the  good  of  the  people. 

Perhaps  my  friend  the  publican  who  wailed 
to  the  policeman  that  *  it  was  nothing  of  a  trade 
since  this  here  woman  has  been  preaching,'  might 
have  comforted  his  heart  had  he  known  how  com- 
pletely the  victorious  enemy  felt  worsted  by  '  the 
trade.'  I  knew  but  too  well  that  when  the  wave  of 
religious  enthusiasm  had  passed,  the  public-house 
was  there  to  resume  its  fatal  influence.  And, 
alas !    men   with    too    often    hereditary   drinking 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  105 

habits  in  their  blood,  under  the  pressure  of  con- 
stant temptation  suppHed  by  nearly  a  hundred 
public-houses,  were  but  too  often  falling  back 
into  their  old  vice. 

I  am  most  anxious  on  this  difficult  social  pro- 
blem, which  at  present  is  so  completely  baffling 
the  wisest  heads  and  strongest  hearts,  not  to  seem 
as  if  I  wished  to  discourage  any  efforts  that  are 
being  made,  or  to  deny  the  wisdom  and  necessity 
of  '  diversity  of  operations '  animated  by  one  spirit 
of  love  to  our  people,  and  a  common  desire  to  get 
rid  of  our  national  enemy.  But  I  cannot  help 
questioning  whether  we  have  as  yet  fully  mastered 
the  conditions  of  the  problem,  whether  we  have  a 
due  regard  to  all  the  facts,  whether  there  are  not 
left  out  elements  which  are  reducing  all  our  efforts 
at  solving  the  problem  to  confusion. 

One  thing  at  least  is  certain.  The  public-house 
in  some  form  or  other  is  a  necessity.  Let  us  at 
least  so  far  realise  the  conditions  of  a  working- 
man's  life  as  to  recognize  this.  Working-men,  I 
repeat,  are  not  differently  constituted  from  other 
men  ;  however  domestic  a  man  may  be,  he  requires 
the   society   of  his  fellows,  he   needs  some  place 


106  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

where  he  can  see  the  papers,  and  where  he  can  talk 
trade  and  politics.  In  our  own  rank,  a  man  can 
see  society  in  his  own  house,  or  in  those  of  his 
friends,  while  most  professional  work  is  more  or 
less  social  in  its  character.  But  the  working-man 
cannot  receive  his  friends  in  the  narrow  limits  of 
his  own  house,  and  manual  labour  ,  is  generally 
accompanied  by  conditions  unfavourable  to  inter- 
course. The  public-house  is  the  only  place  where 
he  can  see  the  more  expensive  public  prints,  keep 
himself  au  coiirant  with  public  affairs,  where  he 
can  transact  the  business  of  clubs,  etc.,  where  he 
can  hear  of  jobs  of  work.  The  club-house,  though 
not  ranking  above  a  convenient  luxury  in  our 
class,  is  an  absolute  necessity  to  working-men. 

But  can  the  public-house  as  at  present  con- 
stituted ever  be  reformed,  even  by  that  potent 
moraliser  of  the  British  mind — an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment }  Even  if,  in  the  face  of  the  enormous 
vested  interests,  we  could  get  a  really  effective 
legislation,  is  it  not  radically  vicious,  a  decayed 
tooth  in  the  social  organization,  only  capable  of 
the  drastic  remedy  of  extraction } 

Not   only   is   a   man    forced    to   take   alcoholic 


SOCIAL   DIFFICULTIES,  107 

drinks  for  the  good  of  the  house, — tea,  coffee,  and 
other   unintoxicating    beverages    not   being    pro- 
vided ;  not  only  are  all  its  traditions  and  its  public 
opinion    on  the  side  of  drunkenness,  so  that   no 
one  feels  disgraced  if  a  man  exceeds,  but  its  tenure 
is    too    often    hopelessly   bad.     The    majority   of 
public-houses  are  owned  by  brewers,  which  in  itself 
secures  the    drink   traffic   being   doubly  and  arti- 
ficially stimulated.     Some   of  the  largest   public- 
houses  in  the  place  where  I  worked,  were  on  what 
is  called  '  barrel  rent,'  that  is,  the  publican  had  the 
house  rent-free  on  condition  of  his  consuming  a 
certain  number  of  barrels  of  beer.     In  Liverpool 
the  public-houses  are  getting  more  and  more  into 
the  hands  of  a  few  wealthy  brewers,  whose  profits 
are  so  enormous,  that  even  if  they  and  not  their 
managers  were  made  responsible,  they  would  still 
be  beyond  the   reach   of  a   system  of  legislative 
fines,  and  can  afford  to  snap  their  fingers  at  the 
law.     At  present  they  are  practically  irresponsible ; 
they  offer  up  their  managers  as  a  scape-goat  to 
the  claims  of  the  law,  and  put  in  another  who  does 
the  same  thing,  only  with  a  little  more  caution. 
If  flying  from  this  evil  we  take  refuge  in  the 


a_ 


io8  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

Gothenburg  system,  and  advocate  the  public- 
houses  being  bought  up  and  vested  in  the  town 
council, — to  say  nothing  of  the  enormous  outlay 
to  begin  with,  it  places  what  one  cannot  but  feel 
to  be  a  dangerous  power  in  the  hands  of  that 
body,  involving  for  its  right  exercise  an  incorrup- 
tibility, a  disinterested  public  spirit,  and  a  practical 
wisdom  which  have  not  proved  universally  charac- 
teristic of  corporations,  with  that  want  of  individual 
responsibility  which  Sydney  Smith  characterized 
in  his  caustic  remark,  that  '  they  had  neither  a 
body  to  be  kicked  nor  a  soul  to  be  damned/ 

Turn  which  way  you  will — that  is  to  say  if  the 
vested  interests  permitted  us  to  turn  at  all,  which 
at  present  they  do  not — one  gets  gored  by  one  or 
the  other  horn  of  a  dilemma  :  make  your  licensing 
system  strict,  and  you  throw  the  trade  into  the 
hands  of  a  few  wealthy  monopolists,  who  have 
capital  enough  to  render  their  sumptuous  gin- 
palaces  irresistibly  attractive,  power  enough  to 
defy  or  evade  the  law.  On  the  other  hand  make 
your  licensing  system  loose,  give  up  restrictive 
measures,  and  go  in  for  free  trade,  and  you  have 
the  multiplication  of  public-houses,  which  wrung 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  109 

the  cry  from  the  poor  wife  endeavouring  to  shep- 
herd her  husband  home  from  his  work,  '  I  could 
get  him  past  two,  but,  oh,  sir,  I  can't  get  him 
past  ten  ! ' 

To  the  permissive  bill  I  do  not  allude.  If  the 
story  of  the  Kilkenny  cats  be,  indeed,  the  great 
epic  of  humanity  under  a  figure,  then  let  us  go  in 
for  it — the  two  tails  I  presume  representing  two 
empty  beer-pots,  which  will  survive  the  destruction 
of  our  race.  If  an  internecine  conflict  renewed 
every  year,  with  the  hatred,  the  party  spirit,  the 
corruption  that  belongs  to  internecine  conflicts, 
will  add  to  the  beauty  and  dignity  of  human 
life  ;  if  a  remedy  so  drastic  that  its  only  cure  is 
amputation,  without  the  power  of  palliation  if 
amputation  is  impossible,  is  the  last  and  most 
enlightened  outcome  of  moral  therapeutics  ;  if  a 
system  so  partial  in  its  operation  that,  in  closing 
the  public-houses  of  one  district,  it  must  neces- 
sarily glut  the  public-houses  of  the  next,  com- 
mends itself  as  likely  to  conduce  to  public  order, 
or  minister  to  the  good  of  the  part  unenlightened 
as  well  as  part  enlightened  whole — let  us  have  it. 
If  there  is  no  alternative  it  may  possibly  be  our 


no  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

duty  to  go  in  for  it,  as  better  on  the  whole  than 
the  present  state  of  things ;  but  it  certainly  will 
not  be  with  a  *  light  heart '  on  the  part  of  those 
who  reflect,  or  who  are  endowed  with  less  irre- 
pressible spirits  than  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  * 

I  would,  therefore,  urge  that  the  public-house 
is  vicious  in  principle,  that  it  contains  no  moral 
element,  which,  in  dealing  with  so  powerful  an 
agent  as  intoxicants,  is  an  absolutely  necessary 
factor,    and   one    which    cannot    be    supplied    by 

^  Since  writing  the  above  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  and  his 
supporters  have  offered  to  unite  in  supporting  some  more 
moderate  and  workable  measure,  in  the  hope  that  it  may- 
prove  a  step  towards  ultimately  passing  their  Permissive 
Bill  ;  so  we  may  now  hope  that  some  common  platform  may 
be  devised  which  will  unite  our  scattered  forces  against  the 
common  enemy.  Surely  the  success  of  the  school-board  in 
dealing  with  the  vast  question  of  elementary  education  points 
to  some  sort  of  licensing-board  elected  by  the  ratepayers, 
and  not  involved,  like  the  Town  Council,  in  a  multitude  of 
other  interests  and  the  mazes  of  local  politics,  but  brought 
into  existence  solely  for  grappling  with  the  difficulties  that 
beset  the  regulation  of  the  liquor  traffic.  Why  should  not 
some  wealthy  public-spirited  town  like  Birmingham,  which 
can  re-create  a  pubhc  library  in  a  few  days,  be  empowered 
by  Parliament  to  try  the  experiment,  and  work  out  useful 
results  for  the  rest  of  England  ? 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  .         in 

legislative  enactments  from  without.  Practically 
it  seems  to  be  constantly  overlooked  that  the  old 
tavern  bore  precisely  the  same  fruits  in  our  own 
class  as  it  is  now  bearing  in  the  lower  classes : 
that  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago  our  class  was  as  given 
to  drinking  habits  as  the  working-classes  are  now ; 
and  not  till  the  club  took  the  place  of  the  tavern 
did  a  better  state  of  public  opinion  arise,  and  a 
consequent  diminution  of  drunkenness. 

I  cannot,  therefore,  but  feel  that  the  energy  of 
the  country  has  gone  too  much  into  a  direct  attack 
upon  'the  drink,'  without  sufficiently  considering 
its  causes,  leading  to  a  considerable  waste  of 
energy  in  the  endeavour  to  make  all  men  total 
abstainers,  which  seems  to  me  a  wholly  visionary 
enterprise ;  and  giving  rise  to  that  curious  modern 
Manichaeism  which  places  the  sin  in  the  drink 
itself,  in  what  Milton  calls  the  *  matter  of  the  sin,' 
leading  even  educated  men  to  commit  themselves 
in  public  to  such  an  absurdly  identical  proposition 
as  *  the  cause  of  drunkenness  is  the  drink,'  which 
conveys  about  as  much  valuable  information  as 
if  I  were  to  say  the  cause  of  shoes  is  the  shoe- 
maker. 


112  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEISf. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  believe  our 
debt  to  total  abstinence  is  immense.  It  has  led  to 
a  searching  investigation  of  the  uses  of  alcohol 
that  would  not  have  taken  place  under  the  pres- 
sure of  a  less  extreme  system,  and  which  has 
already  introduced  the  most  extensive  modifi- 
cations into  medical  practice  and  private  habits, 
and  will  probably  work  a  good  deal  further  in 
this  direction.  It  has  convinced  us  of  the  utter 
absurdity  of  our  drinking  customs,  of  the  daily 
excess  we  are  often  guilty  of  in  amount  even 
when  considering  ourselves  patterns  of  sobriety, 
and  of  the  extreme  danger  of  having  recourse  to 
alcohol  on  ordinary  occasions  of  nervous  exhaus- 
tion and  fatigue,  instead  of  adopting  Sir  William 
Gull's  simple  plan  of  taking  a  few  raisins  when 
too  tired  for  ordinary  food.  But  however  great 
a  work  total  abstinence  is  doing  in  hygiene, 
always  so  closely  allied  to  our  moral  life,  and 
with  whatever  loving  reverence  I  look  on  the 
personal  sacrifice,  in  countless  cases  not  for  them- 
selves but  for  others,  which  has  given  rise  to  so 
large  a  body  of  total  abstainers,  as  a  cure  for  the 
great  moral  evil  of  drunkenness,  it  has  the  same 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  113 

inherent  weakness  as  all  restrictive  systems,  and 
while  conferring  much  partial  benefit,  will  fail  in 
its  wider  aim,  as  celibacy  in  the  middle  ages  failed 
as  a  cure  for  the  evils  of  licentiousness.  Intem- 
perance now  increases  in  the  teeth  of  all  its  efforts, 
admirable  as  these  efforts  have  been.  It  will 
always  remain,  I  believe,  a  useful  factor  in  that 
exceedingly  complex  thing,  human  life,  necessary 
for  some,  and  often  a  help,  even  though  rather  an 
ascetic  help,  towards  realising  that  *  plain  living 
and  high  thinking,'  in  which  modern  life,  in  its 
rebound  from  asceticism,  is  so  grievously  wanting. 
As  a  protest  against  the  present  excess,  and  as 
an  expression  of  fellowship  and  sympathy  with 
those  who  are  trying  to  overcome  their  drinking 
habits,  thoughtful  people  might  do  well  to  adopt 
it,  if  they  are  able  ;  but  exalted  into  a  system,  and 
looked  upon  not  as  a  cure,  but  as  the  only  cure 
of  intemperance,  I  fear  it  is  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment. It  is  for  this  reason  I  regret  so  much  of 
the  energy  of  the  country  having  gone  so  exclu- 
sively into  this  channel,  and  a  direct  attack  upon 
*  the  drink,'  instead  of  on  the  causes  of  the  drink. 

To  take   an    instructive    simile    from   Herbert 

8 


114  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

Spencer: — ^You  see  that  this  wrought  iron  plate 
is  not  flat ;  it  sticks  up  a  little  towards  the  left, 
"  cockles,"  as  we  say.  How  shall  we  flatten  it  ? 
Obviously,  you  reply,  by  hitting  down  on  the 
part  that  is  prominent.  Well,  here  is  a  hammer, 
and  I  give  the  plate  a  blow  as  you  advise.  Harder, 
you  say.  Still  no  effect.  Another  stroke.  Well, 
there  is  one,  and  another,  and  another.  The 
prominence  remains,  you  see :  the  evil  is  as  great 
as  ever,  greater,  indeed.  But  this  is  not  all.  Look 
at  the  warp  which  the  plate  has  got  near  the 
opposite  edge.  Where  it  was  flat  before  it  is  now 
curved.  A  pretty  bungle  we  have  made  of  it. 
Instead  of  curing  the  original  defect  we  have 
produced  a  second.  Had  we  asked  an  artizan 
practised  in  "  planishing,"  as  it  is  called,  he  would 
have  told  us  that  no  good  was  to  be  done,  but 
only  mischief,  by  hitting  down  on  the  projecting 
part.  He  would  have  taught  us  how  to  give 
variously  directed  and  specially  adjusted  blows 
with  a  hammer  elsewhere,  so  attacking  the  evil 
not  by  direct,  but  indirect  actions.  The  required 
process  is  less  simple  than  you  thought.  Even  a 
sheet  of  metal  is  not  to  be  successfully  dealt  with 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES,  115 

after  those  common-sense  methods  in  which  you 
have  so  much  confidence.'  *    ' 

Now,  have  we  not,  in  Herbert  Spencer's  words, 
hit   down   too    directly    at    drunkenness,    aiming 
directly  at  the  results,  instead  of  indirectly  at  the 
causes,  so  that,  as  in  the  iron  plate,  the  evil  has 
grown  and  is  growing  in  the  very  face  of  all  our 
efforts  ?     Should  we  not  meet  with  more  success  if 
we  were  steadily  to  recognize  these  three  points: 
first,  that  the  public-house  of  entertainment  is  a 
necessity  in  the  working-man's  life,  and  cannot  be 
suppressed ;   secondly,  that   the  public-house,  the 
tavern,  as  presenting  no  moral  element,  except  an 
evil  one,  is    radically   defective,    and    subject    to 
abuses;   thirdly,    that   the   club,  with  its  absence 
of  vicious  self-interest  enlisted  in  the  drink  traffic, 
with  its  esprit  de  co7'ps,  and  its  character  to  sustain, 
does  present,  both   positively  and  negatively,  the 
necessary  moral  influences   to   control  the  use  of 
intoxicants,  or  to  dispense  with  them  altogether, 
as  may  be  thought  best ;  and  if,  while  still  endea- 
vouring to  procure  an  amendment  of  our  licensing 
laws,   we   were   to   throw   our   chief  energies  into 
Herbert  Spencer's  Study  of  Sociology,  chap,  xi.,  271. 


Ii6  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

getting     the     club    substituted    for    the    public- 
house  ? 

With  regard  to  the  basis  on  which  these  clubs 
are  established,  whether  on  total  abstinence  prin- 
ciples or  not,  I  can  only  state  that  so  far  as  in- 
temperance is  concerned  it  is  not  a  vital  question. 
The  majority  of  the  working-men's  clubs,  now 
amounting  to  upwards  of  eight  hundred,  are  not 
teetotal ;  but  there  is  no  drunkenness  among  their 
members.  Even  when  spirits  as  well  as  beer  are 
admitted  this  is  the  case ;  the  consumption  in  one 
London  club,  for  many  hundreds  of  men,  only 
amounting  to  two  or  three  bottles  a  week.  The 
large  club-house  which  was  raised  by  my  dear 
father's  exertions  in  connection  with  my  work,  was 
at  first  opened  on  total  abstinence  principles,  but 
beer  has  been  since  admitted  with  no  evil  results. 
Indeed,  Mr.  Hodgson  Pratt,  the  Chairman  of  the 
Working-Men's  Club  and  Institute  Union,  states 
that  their  almost  invariable  experience  is  that  the 
quantity  of  intoxicants  consumed  steadily  dimi- 
nishes after  the  first  opening  of  a  club.  In  one  large 
club  in  the  North  they  doubled  their  members  and 
halved  their  consumption  of  beer  by  the  end  of  the 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES,  117 

first  year.  On  a  rough  north-country  fellow  being 
asked  the  reason  of  this  anomalous  result,  'Well, 
sir,  I  dunno'  how  it  is ;  but  ye  see  we've  so  mooch 
a  gooin'  on  with  lectures,  and  singin',  and  readin's, 
and  entertainments,  that  somehoo  we've  no  time 
to  think  aboot  the  beer.*  The  beer  was  in  fact, 
as  our  American  friends  say,  fairly  'crowded  out.' 
In  another  very  large  club  lately  formed  in  the 
East  End  of  London  among  the  lowest  coster- 
mongers,  the  members  are  possessed  with  a  raging 
desire  to  improve  their  minds,  while  at  the  same 
time  they  greatly  object  to  being  preached  at. 
Amongst  other  distinguished  men,  they  sent  a 
deputation  to  Cardinal  Manning  to  request  him  to 
come  and  address  them  on  Sunday,  but  added 
that  they  made  only  two  stipulations  with  His 
Eminence,  that  he  must  not  talk  to  them  about 
religion,  and  he  must  not  talk  to  them  about 
temperance!  Like  a  wise  man,  he  at  once  cor- 
dially accepted  their  invitation,  and  was  listened 
to  by  a  most  attentive  and  appreciative  audience, 
the  men  sitting  with  their  pots  of  beer  before 
them  in  case  His  Eminence  proved  a  thought 
dry,  their  wives  sitting   peacefully  by  their   sides 


Ji8  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

with  the  last  baby  at  their  breast;  and  I  have 
no  doubt  no  one  would  have  suspected  from 
the  nature  of  the  discourse  the  severe  surgical 
operation  the  eloquent  cardinal  had  submitted 
to  at  their  hands,  of  having  both  his  legs 
cut  off. 

Of  course,  where  the  rough  and  costermonger 
element  is  large,  some  time  must  be  allowed  for 
their  gradually  working  up  to  the  standard  of 
sobriety  and  choice  language  we  should  like ;  but 
at  the  same  time,  let  us  be  thankful  that  the 
drunkenness  that  fills  the  mouth  with  oaths  and 
obscenity,  and  vents  itself  in  kicks  to  the  wife 
and  blows  to  the  child,  is  got  rid  of.  The  mere 
fact  that  they  get  pure  undrugged  beer  goes  a 
long  way  in  itself  to  secure  this  result.  At  first 
they  don't  quite  know  what  to  make  of  it,  but 
they  soon  grow  very  much  to  prefer  it.  And  the 
sense  of  esprit  de  corps,  of  the  character  of  the 
club  to  keep  up,  and  the  growing  feeling  that 
drunkenness  is  disgraceful  and  wasteful,  does  the 
rest.  Indeed  the  sooner  we  disabuse  ourselves  of 
the  idea  that  a  working-man  cannot  control  him- 
self unless  he  be  bandaged  up  with  pledges  and 


SOCIAL   DIFFICULTIES.  119 

restrictions  the  better.  Once  rid  them  of  a  vicious 
public-house  system,  it  will  be  found  that  their 
clubs  are,  as  a  rule,  as  sober  and  well-conducted 
as  ours. 

*  But  why  not  advocate  the  establishment  of 
coffee-palaces,  which  are  open  to  all,  and  where 
any  one  could  go  and  get  good  coffee  when  he 
pleases,  just  as  freely  as  he  can  go  to  a  public- 
house  } '  perhaps  some  one  will  ask ;  *  why  restrict 
/t  to  the  members  of  a  club }  why  not  throw  the 
building  open  to  the  public  }  * 

Do  you  quite  understand  the  problem  you 
have  got  to  solve  ?  I  answer  to  those  who  talk 
thus.  Doubtless  coffee-palaces  are  admirable 
things,  and  I  not  only  advocate  them,  but  ad- 
vocate their  being  multiplied  tenfold  in  every 
large  town.  They  will  do  much  to  educate  all 
classes  alike  out  of  our  present  ridiculous  de- 
pendence on  alcoholic  drinks,  as  if  they  were 
the  necessary  concomitant  of  every  social  and 
kindly  feeling.  But  however  important  is  the 
function  coffee-palaces  may  fulfil,  they  will 
not  prove  a  substitute  for  the  pubHc-house,  in 
other    words,    they   may    take    the    outworks   of 


120  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

intemperance,  but  they  will  leave  its  citadel  un- 
touched. As  a  rule  working-men  do  not  use 
them  as  an  evening  resort,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  they  do  not  afford  quiet  separate  rooms 
where  they  can  feel  at  home,  and  where  they 
can  smoke  their  pipes  and  do  as  they  like.  And 
I  would  earnestly  point  out  it  is  the  evening 
resort  that  must  ever  be  the  stronghold  of 
drunkenness.  Men  don't  go  to  the  public-house 
on  purpose  to  get  drunk.  In  all  my  wide 
experience  I  have  only  known  one  case  of  a 
man  who  went  with  the  deliberate  intention  of 
getting  drunk,  who  sat  down  all  by  himself 
and  went  steadily  at  it.  It  is  the  company 
and  good  fellowship  that  lead  to  it,  and  what 
we  want  is  something  that  takes  hold  of  this 
company  and  good  fellowship  feeling,  and  makes 
it  a  force  on  the  side  of  decent  behaviour,  as 
the  public-house  takes  hold  of  it  and  makes  it 
a  force  on  the  side  of  indecent  behaviour;  that 
makes  it  a  principle  of  orderly  conduct,  instead 
of  a  principle  of  disorderly  rows  ;  and  this  the 
club  element,  and  that  element  alone,  does, 
with  suitable  premises   necessary  to  its  develop- 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  121 

ment,    and    of   which    the    club    must   have    the 
exclusive  ownership. 

But  even  in  those  rare  cases  where  the  upper 
premises  of  a  coffee-palace  are  let  off  for  the 
exclusive  use  of  a  working-man's  club,  there  is 
the  great  disadvantage  of  the  club  being  forced 
to  adopt  total  abstinence  principles,  whether  they 
wish  it  or  not,  since  intoxicants  are  not  allowed 
on  the  premises.  In  the  case  of  voluntary- 
teetotalers,  this  would  lead  to  no  evil ;  but  with 
those  who  are  not,  it  leads  to  their  going  to 
the  public-house  to  get  the  glass  of  beer  which 
they  cannot  procure  at  their  club.  And  I  would 
again  urge  that  you  will  never  attack  drunken- 
ness in  the  mass  on  principles  of  total  absti- 
nence. Admirable  and  successful  as  its  efforts 
are  with  the  individual,  the  mass  will  never 
come  under  its  influence.  Why,  the  mass  of 
the  clergy  and  ministers  of  religion,  certainly 
taking  their  small  pay  and  hard  work,  the  most 
self-denying  class  of  men  we  have,  are  not  total 
abstainers.  Why  do  we  expect  of  working-men 
a  self-denial  which  in  the  mass  we  do  not  practise 
ourselves  ?      Are    God's    ten    commandments    so 


122  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

very  easy  to  keep  that  we  must  be  perpetually 
adding  an  eleventh  of  our  own  ?  Let  us  master 
the  ten  first  before  we  go  on  to  an  eleventh, 
which  makes  it  a  sin  for  a  working-man,  not  for 
ourselves,  to  take  a  glass  of  small  beer  in  his 
club. 

But,  at  the  risk  of  wearisome  repetition,  I 
must  again  say,  that  when  you  admit  intoxicants 
you  must  also  secure  a  moral  element,  the  social 
esprit  de  corps  of  a  well-organized  club,  to  con- 
trol them.  The  admission  of  beer  into  coffee- 
palaces  and  British-Workmen,  would,  I  fear,  in 
the  end,  generate  the  old  abuses  of  the  public- 
house  over  again. 

I  trust,  however,  because  I  advocate  the  club 
principle  as  a  good  one,  I  shall  not  be  accused 
of  the  folly  of  looking  upon  clubs  as  a  com- 
plete panacea.  Clubs  are  no  ideal  institutions, 
they  are  liable  to  abuse  like  everything  else. 
One  may  drink  condemnation  out  of  the  chalice 
itself,  if  one  be  so  minded.  Many  working- 
men's  clubs  are,  I  have  no  doubt,  low  and 
secularist  in  tone,  and  a  few  may  be  accom- 
panied  with    grave    abuses,   though   these   latter 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  123 

are  the  exception.  But  I  contend  that  the  want 
of  a  higher  tone  is  in  great  part  owing  to  the 
life  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  the  efforts  ol 
educated  men  having  flowed  almost  exclusively 
into  other  channels.  Had  there  been  earnest 
co-operation,  on  the  part  of  the  clergy  especially, 
with  the  working-men  in  their  movement  for 
securing  some  respectable  substitute  for  the 
public-house,  had  there  been  that  hearty  min- 
gling of  educated  and  uneducated  on  Club  Com- 
mittees, the  tone  of  the  existing  clubs  would 
unquestionably  be  higher,  and  working-men 
would  not  have  once  more  discovered  that 
modern  Christianity  is  out  of  sympathy  with 
them  and  their  difficulties,  that  it  has  no  keen 
understanding  of  them  and  their  wants,  and  how 
best  to  meet  them,  and  would  not  have  learned 
a  fresh  lesson  in  their  favourite  thesis,  that 
they  'don't  see  the  good  of  religion/ 

I  would,  therefore,  have  every  clergyman  feel 
that  the  parish  is  simply  disgraced  that  offers  no 
substitute  for  the  public-house;  that  he  has  no 
right  to  preach  the  gospel  while  leaving  his  people 
hopelessly  exposed  to  a  sure  and  deadly  evil,  any 


1^4  IVORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

more  than  he  would  have  to  preach  the  laws  of 
health  over  an  open  drain.  Meetings  of  working- 
men  should  be  at  once  held,  some  well-known  and 
popular  speaker  should  be  secured,  bills  being 
distributed  at  all  the  public-houses,  and  left  at 
each  door ;  some  local  doctor  should  display 
gorgeously-coloured  diagrams  of  the  results  of 
drinking  to  the  internal  organs,  the  inflammation 
being  emphasized  by  much  expenditure  of  ver- 
milion ;  statistical  statements  should  be  made,  both 
general  and  local,  of  the  amount  of  money  spent 
in  drink,  and  what  the  money  might  effect  if  spent 
on  their  own  homes,  and  an  earnest  appeal  made 
to  the  better  man  in  them,  while  an  offer  of  help 
should  be  made  to  meet  the  expenses  of  starting 
a  club  of  their  own  in  some  temporary  room  or 
existing  public-house,  if  such  can  be  found.*  It 
is  a  curious  fact,  and  one  that  is  a  source  of 
some  anxiety  to  those  who  are  interested  in  the 
club  movement,  and   see   in   it   one  of  the  most 

*  Any  one  wishing  to  start  a  Working-Men's  Club  has  only 
to  apply  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Working-Men's  Club  and 
Institute  Union,  150,  Strand,  and  he  will  be  at  once  supplied 
with  every  possible  information  of  the  most  valuable  and 
practical  kind. 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  125 

hopeful  and  practical  ways  of  getting  rid  of  in- 
temperance, that  owing  to  the  want  of  public 
interest  and  co-operation,  wealthy  brewers  are 
beginning  to  offer  to  advance  the  funds  for  esta- 
bhshing  the  proper  premises  for  a  working-man's 
club,  on  condition,  of  course,  of  securing  the  custom 
of  the  club  in  addition  to  a  fair  rate  of  interest  on 
their  money.  I  do  not  myself  think  this  a  fatal 
arrangement  by  any  means,  the  brewer  having  no 
tool  like  the  publican  to  exalt  his  interests  at  the 
price  of  the  public  good  ;  and  as  brewers  are  born 
with  consciences  like  other  men,  there  are  many 
who  would  doubtless  very  much  prefer  to  carry  on 
a  profitable  business  without  the  sense  of  bringing 
wide-spread  misery  and  ruin  into  so  many  homes, 
which  must  occasionally  visit  the  owners  of  public- 
houses.  But  I  think  we  must  be  all  agreed  that 
it  is  most  undesirable  that  the  club  should  have 
any  direct  connexion  with  the  drinking  trade; 
and  it  is  for  public-spirited  men  and  women  to 
prevent  this,  by  coming  forward  and  offering  the 
capital  needed  for  securing  suitable  premises. 

With  regard  to  the  basis  adopted,  whether  total 
abstinence  or  moderation,  it  should  be  left  to  the 


126  WORK'  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

members  of  the  club  when  formed  to  decide,  all 
attempts  at  meddling  and  dictation  being  simply- 
fatal  with  anything  to  do  with  working-men. 
Brotherly  help  from  a  man  or  a  woman  of  superior 
station  to  their  own  they  are  in  general  most 
grateful  for ;  and  their  defect  of  jealousy  and  dis- 
trust of  one  another,  which  belongs  to  all  unedu- 
cated people,  makes  such  co-operation  peculiarly^ 
valuable  to  them ;  but  freedom  to  manage  their 
own  affairs  in  their  way,  not  perhaps  ours,  they 
will  and  must  have. 

To  those  who  fear  the  encroachment  of  the 
club  on  the  homes,  I  would  suggest  it  is  useless 
fearing  what  already  exists;  the  worst,  the  most 
hopeless  encroachment  on  the  home  is  the  public- 
house.  I  used  to  tell  the  public-house  men  that 
they  were  unworthy  of  the  grand  old  English 
name  of  husbands  ;  they  were  house-breakers,  not 
house-bands,  squandering  on  the  publican  and  his 
wife  the  time  and  money  wanted  at  home.  But  I 
believe  all  custodians  of  clubs  would  pretty  much 
echo  the  experience  of  one  who  told  me  that 
at  first  he  was  much  discouraged  by  observing 
that  his  new  members  after  a  time  ceased  to  come 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  127 

every  evening,  and  only  turned  up  once  or  twice 
in  the  week.  But  on  asking  the  reason,  he  was 
told,  'Well,  don't  ye  see  when  I  went  to  the  public 
I  used  never  to  think  of  stopping  at  home,  but 
now  that  we  have  got  things  a  bit  comfortable- 
like, why  I  likes  to  sit  with  my  old  missus  some- 
times when  I  comes  in  tired.' 

Clubs  for  big  lads  up  to  the  age  when  they  can 
safely  be  admitted  among  the  men,  are  of  the 
utmost  importance,  but  if  established  under  the 
same  roof,  they  must  have  a  separate  room  and 
separate  entrances.  Any  attempt  to  mix  them  is 
always  fatal. 

A  club-house  might  also  be  so  arranged  as  to 
have  a  public  bar  where  coffee  and  other  non-in- 
toxicants and  light  refreshments  might  be  supplied 
to  the  general  public,  without  interfering  with  the 
comfort  and  privacy  of  the  club. 

But  no  one  specific  will  ever  cure  our  great 
national  evil.  In  our  moral  'planishing,'  our  blows 
must  be  variously  directed.  Merely  to  sweep  and 
to  do  up  the  house,  if  it  be  left  empty,  is  not 
enough  to  expel  the  evil  spirit.  Doubtless  one  of 
the  great  causes    of    drunkenness  is  the  dulness, 


128  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

the  monotony  of  life,  the  daily  grind  which 
presses  heavily  on  us  all  at  times,  but  especially 
on  those  engaged  in  manual  labour,  particularly 
arnong  the  more  shut-up  people  of  the  north,  that 
pathetic  longing  that  poor  human  nature  has  to 
be  a  little  jolly  under  the  adverse  conditions  the 
world  affords,  to  dance  even  though  it  be  on  a 
rotten  plank.  Education  will  doubtless  be  a  great 
help  to  us  here,  in  placing  a  wider  range  and  a 
better  class  of  amusements  within  the  reach  of 
the  people.  But  let  us  not  put  a  superstitious 
trust  in  its  efficacy.  Let  us  not  forget  that  educa- 
tion is  nothing  in  itself,  only  an  added  capacity 
for  good  or  for  evil.  If  we  look  not  wisely  on  the 
sun  himself,  he  smites  us  into  darkness,  says 
Milton ;  and  the  good  of  education,  like  light, 
depends  on  what  use  we  put  it  to.  Scotland  is 
better  educated  than  the  English  people  can  hope 
to  be  in  two  generations,  yet  Scotland  is  more 
drunken  than  England.  And  may  not  the  Puri- 
tanic feeling  against  amusements,  which  is  more 
rife  in  Scotland  even  than  in  England,  be  much 
to  blame  here  ?  If  Wesley  could  not  see  why  the 
devil   should   have   all   the   good   tunes,    still  les 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  129 

should  we  be  able  to  see  why  he  should  have  all 
the  good  amusements.  That  some  have  been  put 
to  a  bad  use  is  no  reason  for  rejection.  It  is  no 
use  quarrelling  with  hemp  because  some  men 
hang  themselves  with  it.  We  need  to  claim  every 
amusement  which  can  be  carried  on  without  bet- 
ting, gambling,  and  drinking,  and  yield  a  little 
pleasurable  excitement  which  does  not  end  like 
the  excitement  of  the  drink,  in  what  has  been 
called  the  '  foot  and  mouth  disease,'  the  excite- 
ment that  goes  in  at  the  mouth  and  comes  out  at 
the  heavy  boots,  in  kicking  wife  or  child.  Billiards, 
bagatelle,  skittles,  cricket,  croquet,  chess,  draughts, 
dominoes, — nay,  I  believe  my  soul  is  stout  enough 
to  contemplate  even  beggar-m.y-neighbour  without 
quailing,  provided  there  be  no  gambling, — anything 
that  may  innocently  fill  the  empty  place  of  the 
beer  pot ;  let  us  claim  and  make  good  use  of 
them  all. 

A  good  deal  more  might  be  done  with  music, 
especially  in  the  direction  of  brass  bands.  The 
expense  of  the  instruments  is  a  difidculty,  of  course, 
but  this  might  be  paid  partly  in  instalments,  partly 
by  subscriptions. 

9 


130  IVOJ^JiT  AMONG   WORKING-MEN". 

And  might  we  not  make  some  use  of  one  of  the 
most  powerful  recreations  of  the  human  mind  in 
all  ages — acting,  from  dumb  crambo  and  charades 
up  to  simple  little  plays,  illustrative  of  temperance, 
or  happy  home  life.     I  shall  be  told  at  once  that 
this  would  be  most  dangerous,  as  giving  a  taste 
for  the  theatre ;  but  in  the  same  way  music  may 
give  a  taste  for  the  low  music-halls.     Would  it  not 
be  wiser  to  recognize  that  these  tastes  do  exist 
with  or  without  us,  and  that  if  we  won't  give  them 
wholesome    food,    they    will    get    unwholesome? 
*  Empty  by   filling  '  is  the  motto  of  Christianity. 
Place  the  worst  pig-wash  under  the  well-head,  and 
it   disappears   of    itself.     And   surely   that   which 
afforded  the  noblest   education   to  the   people  in 
ancient  times  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  ;  and 
that  which  in  a   more  private  form  has  found  its 
way  into  our  Bible,   in  the  exquisite  little  love- 
drama  of  the  Shulamite  and  her  shepherd  lover, — 
unquestionably  a  dramatic  performance,  and  pro- 
bably acted  at  wedding-feasts  and  private  enter- 
tainments,— cannot  be  hopelessly  bad,  nor  deserve 
the  indiscriminate  stigma  the  religious  world  has 
fastened  upon  it. 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  131 

Few   things,  I   think,   fill    one    with   a   deeper 
melancholy  than  the  contemplation  of  the  amuse- 
ments of  our  English  people,  as  they  at  present 
exist,  or  the  apathy  and  the  impenetrable  narrow- 
ness of  the  religious   world  with   regard    to   this 
vital  question.     If  we  denied  to   ourselves   what 
we  deny  to  the  people,  the  spectacle  we  present 
on   this   point    would   be    more    bearable.      But 
though  our  educated  lives  are  far  less  monotonous 
in  their  wider  interests  than  the  uneducated,  we 
are  careful  enough  to  secure   our   own   share   of 
amusement,  and  pleasant  occasional  breaks  to  the 
monotony  of  life.     We  have  our  tours  abroad,  our 
pleasant    seaside  change,    our   agreeable   visits  at 
a  friend's  house,  shooting,  fishing,  music,  lectures, 
entertainments  of  all  kinds.    But  Professor  Stanley 
Jevons,  in  his  admirable  article  on   the  '  Amuse- 
ments of  the  People,'*  scarcely  exaggerates  when 
he  remarks,  *  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
the  right    to    dwell  in   a   grimy   street,  to    drink 
freely  in  the  neighbouring   public-houses,  and  to 
walk  freely  between  the  high-walled    parks,  and 
the  jealously  preserved  estates  of  our  landowners, 
*  See  Conte?nporary  Review ^  October  1878. 


132  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN'. 

IS  all  that  the  just  and  equal  laws  of  England 
secure  to  the  mass  of  the  population.' 

The  consequence  of  this  selfish  indifference  of 
the  higher  and  educated  classes  has  been  in 
England  a  steady  degradation  of  the  amusements 
of  the  people,  which  perhaps  reaches  its  culmi- 
nating point  in  the  ordinary  music  hall,  desecrat- 
ing the  very  name  of  music,  it  being  impossible 
for  language  to  describe,  as  Professor  Jevons 
observes,  '  the  mixture  of  inane  songs,  of  senseless 
burlesques,  and  of  sensational  acrobatic  tricks, 
which  make  the  staple  of  a  music-hall  entertain- 
ment, to  say  nothing  of  the  far  graver  moral 
drawbacks.' 

Why  should  these  things  be  ?  Is  our  English 
nation,  which  gave  birth  to  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  more  degraded  by  nature  than  any  other  ? 
Why  should  our  noble  people  present  on  this 
one  point  such  a  humiliating  contrast  to  other 
nations  ?  I  remember  a  German  doctor  tellinof 
me  that  when  he  was  a  boy  at  school,  he  and 
his  schoolfellows  went  for  a  walking  tour  in  the 
Tyrol,  and  on  one  occasion  they  had  all  to  litter 
down  on  the  floor  of  a  little  village  inn,  where 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  133 

they  were  kept  awake  till  twelve  o'clock  by  the 
blacksmith,  the  shoemaker,  the  baker,  and  one 
or  two  other  village  functionaries,  performing 
admirably  string  quartets,  and  quintets  from 
Beethoven,  Mozart,  and  Haydn !  Or  take  the 
American  lady,  whose  butcher  lingers  on  the 
threshold  after  delivering  the  last  joint  at  her 
door,  to  discuss  the  merits  of  Tennyson's  last 
poem.  Or  by  way  of  contrast  on  a  still  wider 
scale,  take  Professor  Jevons's  description  of  the 
Tivoli  gardens  at  Copenhagen,  with  a  large 
partially  open  music  pavilion,  and  a  fine  string 
orchestra,  and  semi-classical  concerts  every  evening 
throughout  the  summer,  attended  by  the  Royal 
Family,  and  all  classes  down  to  artizans,  and 
decent  working  folk,  the  seats  being  purposely 
priced  very  low.  Why  should  not  this  kind  of 
thing  be  possible  in  England,  gradually  educating 
our  people's  tastes  to  better  and  higher  things  t 
The  climate  of  Denmark  is  not  better  than  our 
own,  nor  are  the  people  more  musical.  Why 
should  not  the  London  parks,  and  the  public 
grounds  of  our  large  towns,  have  each  their  music 
pavilion,  and  their  outdoor  concerts  in  the  summer 


134  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

evenings,  well  supplied  with  light  unintoxicating 
beverages  ?  Why  should  not  Professor  Jevons's 
suggestion  be  acted  on,  of  turning  the  Columbia 
Hall  into  a  place  of  recreation  for  the  people, 
with  a  good  supply  of  swings,  merry-go-rounds, 
and  the  like  ?  Why  should  lawn-tennis,  croquet, 
golf,  and  other  harmless  games,  be  the  exclusive 
property  of  the  rich,  so  that  the  outdoor  amuse- 
ments of  the  people  are  reduced  to  squirting  at 
one  another  with  detestable  metal  pipes,  and  play- 
ing at  kiss-in-the-ring  ?  We  have  taken  a  few  first 
steps  in  the  right  direction.  The  Crystal  Palace, 
of  which  the  Manager  boasts  with  just  pride  that 
not  one  person  in  a  million  among  visitors  is 
charged  with  drunken  and  disorderly  conduct, 
the  Brighton  and  Westminster  Aquariums,  have 
proved  that  our  people  are  just  as  capable  of 
good  and  undebased  amusements  as  any  other; 
all  we  now  want  is  that  the  necessity  for  it  should 
be  recognised,  and  the  means  for  procuring  it, 
under  the  higher  forms  and  good  moral  regula- 
tions which  will  secure  the  union  of  all  classes, 
should  be  provided  in  all  our  towns  and  villages. 
There  is  an  obvious   practical   measure  which 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  135 

at  least  we  might  embark  in  without  seriously 
irritating  that  sensitive  but  much-enduring  organ, 
the  pocket  of  ratepayers,  and  that  is,  providing 
the  suburbs  of  London  with  seats.  At  present 
there  are  millions  and  miUions  of  people  traversing 
hundreds  of  miles  of  streets  without  a  chance  of 
sitting  down,  except  in  or  just  outside  a  public- 
house,  where  they  must  drink  to  pay  for  the  rest, 
and  poison  their  stomachs  to  relieve  their  legs. 

*Only  think,'  says  an  East  End  worker,  'that 
to  these  millions  the  streets  are  their  recreation 
ground,  their  drawing-room,  the  only  place  where 
they  meet  their  sweethearts,  or  talk  with  their 
friends  ;  the  place  they  call  home  is  too  often 
only  a  corner  to  sleep  and  eat  in ;  all  the  rest  of 
their  life  is  passed  in  the  work-shop  or  the  street. 
Yet  we  won't  let  them  sit  down  !  Surely  there  is 
no  sin  in  sitting  out  of  doors.  Look  at  an  un- 
occupied house  or  shop  anywhere  in  East  London, 
and  see  how  its  doorsteps  are  crowded.  Many 
respectable  householders  throw  a  pail  of  water  on 
their  steps  to  prevent  their  being  sat  upon.  Yet 
our  public  thoroughfares,  notably  Bow  Road,  are 
broad  enough  to   admit   seats   without   the   least 


136  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

inconvenience,  and  seem  planted  with  trees  on 
purpose  ;  and  there  are  waste  corners,  often 
under  the  dead  wall  that  bounds  a  work-shop, 
where  very  sheltered  seats  might  stand,  annoying 
nobody.  In  fact,  I  fancy  these  seats  would  rather 
tend  to  public  order,  and  prevent  groups  of  people 
standing  against  houses  to  conduct  business  or 
arguments,  often  a  cause  of  much  annoyance.' 

Of  the  higher  influences,  of  that  which  pre- 
eminently empties  by  filling,  filling  with  higher 
instincts,  higher  aims,  higher  hopes,  till  there  is 
no  place  found  for  the  low  and  the  animal,  I  have 
already  spoken.  Where  there  is  a  great  indiffer- 
ence to  religion,  a  debating  or  Mutual  Improve- 
ment Society,  in  which  one  of  the  subjects  for 
discussion  should  be  religion,  the  working-men 
giving  their  own  views  on  it,  is  one  of  the  best 
agencies  for  awakening  an  interest,  and  may  lead 
on  to  a  Bible-class.  It  is  no  use  thrusting  the 
Bible  down  their  throats ;  but  they  should  be 
led  to  look  upon  it,  as  it  is,  as  eminently  the 
working-men's  book,  chiefly  the  inspired  sayings 
and  doings  of  working-men ;  from  David  the 
shepherd,  and   Amos  the    herdsman,   Peter   and 


SOCIAL  DIFFICULTIES.  137 

John  the  fishermen,  up  to  One  chosen  out  of  the 
people,  of  Whom  it  was  said  in  contempt,  Is  not 
this  the  carpenter  ?  A  simple  service  held  in 
their  own  club-room  on  Sundays,  if  the  members 
do  not  object,  is  often  better  than  any  Mission- 
room. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION. 

LOSELY  allied  with  the  great  drink- 
ing question,  comes  the  question  of  the 
people's  savings.  *Good  husbandry/ 
says  De  Foe,  *  is  no  English  virtue.  It  may  have 
been  brought  over,  and  in  some  places  where  it 
has  been  planted,  it  has  thriven  well  enough ;  but 
it  is  a  foreign  species;  it  neither  loves,  nor  is 
beloved  by,  Englishmen/  From  De  Foe  down- 
wards, we  have  been  apt  to  contemplate  our 
national  spendthrift  habits  with  a  sort  of  wasteful 
fatalism,  as  though  there  were  an  inherent  ten- 
dency in  English  nature  to  squander.  Some  of 
our  leading  men  have  even  maintained  that  thrift 
cannot  be  expected  to  form  an  attribute  of  a 
bold  and  progressive  type  of  national  character 
like   our  own.     But  modern  science  is   teaching 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION.  139 

US  to  look  with  suspicion  on  all  specific  ten- 
dencies, as  only  another  name  for  our  own 
ignorance  and  want  of  patient  observation. 
Here,  again,  instead  of  indulging  in  abstract 
considerations  of  national  character,  would  it  not 
be  better  patiently  to  regard  the  facts  ? 

The  first  fact  that  strikes  one  is  unquestionably 
a  very  grave  one  :  that  so  few  of  the  working-men, 
so  far  fewer  in  proportion  than  in  other  countries, 
are  possessed  of  capital.  England,  the  wealthiest 
country  in  the  world,  also  has  the  largest 
proletariat.  Two-thirds  of  the  population,  it 
has  been  computed,  are  dependent  on  wages, 
and  the  mass  of  them  live  hterally  from  hand 
to  mouth. 

The  fact  is  soon  stated ;  but  perhaps  it  is  im- 
possible to  estimate  the  evils  and  dangers  that 
lie  hidden  in  it.  Not  only  does  it  keep  the  mass 
of  the  wage-receiving  class  for  ever  living  on 
the  verge  of  disaster,  liable  by  the  inherent 
fluctuations  of  trade  to  be  reduced  to  want  of 
the  necessaries  of  life,  and  to  dependence  on 
public  or  private  aid ;  not  only  does  it  place 
the    working-classes    in    that    disastrous     anta- 


I40  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

gonism  with  the  capital  in  which  they  have  no 
share  which  threatens  the  prosperity  of  our 
trade,  but  it  forms  an  element  of  instability 
both  in  the  national  history  and  in  individual 
character  which  it  is  difficult  to  estimate. 

A  great  contractor  for  foreign  railways,  on 
being  asked  by  Professor  Fawcett  which  he  pre- 
ferred employing,  English  or  Italian  navvies, 
replied  that,  on  the  whole,  he  preferred  Italian 
navvies  ;  for  though  the  English  navvy  could 
do  double  and  even  treble  the  day's  work,  he 
lost  so  much  time,  and  gave  so  much  trouble  in 
drinking  and  fighting,  that  as  a  rule  the  sober, 
industrious  Italian  answered  the  best.  On  being 
asked  why  there  should  be  this  difference  of 
conduct,  he  answered  at  once,  *  Oh,  the  Italian 
is  saving  up  his  money  to  buy  a  little  bit  of 
land, — the  one  ambition  of  his  heart, — and  he 
has  none  to  waste.  The  Englishman  has  no- 
thing to  look  forward  to,  he  has  no  particular 
inducement  to  save,  and  everything  goes  in 
drink.' 

In  a  rich  manufacturing  country  like  England, 
where  the  land  is  of  limited  extent,  and  great 


THE  SA  VINGS  (QUESTION.  141 

wealth  accumulates  in  the  hands  of  a  few  capi- 
talists, land,  as  conferring  some  social  distinction, 
must    gain   an    artificial  value,   which,   do   away 
with  the  law  of  primogeniture  and  all  legal  tying- 
up     and     complexities     to-morrow,     would      still 
interfere  with  peasant  proprietorship  in  England, 
and   have   a  tendency  to   mass   the  land  in   the 
hands  of  a  few  wealthy  proprietors.     Nor,  indeed, 
with   the   more   lucrative   avenues   of  trade  open 
to     him,   would     our    EngUsh     working-man     be 
content  to  exercise  the  extreme  frugality,  thrift, 
and  hard   living   involved   in   peasant   proprietor- 
ship.    The  ItaUan  labourer's  inducement  to  save 
is   therefore   not   to  be   had  for  the  Englishman. 
But    land    is    not    the    only    investment.     Why 
should     there    not    be    a    proportionate    number 
in   England   of    peasant    proprietors    of    capital.? 
Why  have  the  labouring  classes  no  share  in  the 
capital      which     has     been     called     *  crystallized 
labour'?      It     was     not     always    so;     both     the 
yeoman     and     the     weaver    were     possessed     of 
capital    in    the    form    of   a  small   holding,   or   a 
hand-loom;     but    with     the    merging     of    small 
holdings    into    large     properties,    and    of    hand- 


142  WOJ^A^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

looms  into  larger  mills,  there  has  been  a  steady 
deterioration  in  this  respect.  As  Mr.  Frederic 
Seebohm  observes  in  an  able  article  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review ^^  *  With  the  loss  of  the  heredi- 
tary nest-egg  of  capital,  has  come  the  loss  of 
the  hereditary  habit  of  thrift  and  saving.' 

But  has  not  the  same  want  of  seeing,  which  I 
complain  of  in  the  moral  life,  the  same  want  of 
one-tenth  of  the  careful  observation  and  taking 
in  of  all  the  facts  of  the  moral  problem  which 
would  be  bestowed  as  a  matter  of  course  on  a 
problem  in  chemistry,  been  largely  at  fault  here 
as  elsewhere }  Not  only  is  our  poor  law  a  gigantic 
discouragement  of  saving,  a  systematic  recognition 
that  the  able-bodied  labourer,  subject  to  no  par- 
ticular disaster,  for  which  exceptional  provision 
could  be  made,  cannot  save,  but  must  be  provided 
for  by  the  State  in  his  old  age  or  sickness,  though 
it  is  a  statistical  fact  that  the  working-classes  spend 
;^30,ooo,ooo  per  annum  in  drink  and  tobacco ;  but 
the  efforts  of  the  State  to  work  in  an  opposite  direc- 
tion have  been  singularly  unfortunate.     The  whole 

*  The  Savings  of  the  People :  Edinburgh  Review^  July 
1873. 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION,  143 

influence  of  both  Government  and  individuals,  till 
lately,  has  gone   into   encouraging   benefit  clubs, 
the   one   form   of   saving  which   accumulates   no 
capital,  and  which  is  most  exposed  to  miscalcu- 
lation  and   fraud.      The  very   endeavour   on   the 
part    of  the   State   to   save   the   funds   from   the 
latter,  by  offering  Government  security  with  the 
additional    bait    of   \\    per    cent,    proved    most 
injurious    in    the    end,   as   the  gradual    reduction 
of  the  interest  in   itself  produced  the  danger  of 
insolvency   to   the    clubs,   while    the    Exchequer 
suffered  a  loss  of  not  much  less  than  ;£"  1,000,000. 
Indeed,  so  precarious  is  this  form  of  investment 
both  from  the  extreme  complexity  of  the  calcu- 
lation in  compound  interest  it  requires  to  regulate 
the  rate  of  payment,  and  also  from  the  liability 
to  fraud,  that  it  is  calculated  that  some  70  per 
cent,  of  the  benefit  clubs  are  insolvent.  Unquestion- 
ably the  breaking-up  of  so  many  has  given  a  most 
grievous  check  to  saving  on  the  part  of  the  people. 
But  already  matters  have  taken  a  more  hopeful 
turn,  and  the  conditions  are  being  realized  for  the 
creation  of  capital  in  the  hands  of  the  working- 
classes. 


144  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

First  in  order  and  importance  comes  the  Post 
Office  Savings  Bank,  which  has  formed  the  most 
valuable  elementary  school  in  thrift  of  modern  times. 

*As  early  as  the  year  1807/  a  writer  in  the 
British  Quarterly*  narrates,  'Mr.  Whitbread  in 
the  House  of  Commons  foreshadowed  the  present 
Post  Office  Savings  Bank  scheme,  in  a  remark- 
able speech  on  the  Poor  Laws  Amendment  Bill. 
He  recommended  the  institution  of  a  Government 
Savings  Bank,  to  be  worked  with  the  Post  Office 
machinery,  the  money  received  to  be  invested  in 
Government  stock,  the  annual  limit  of  deposits 
to  be  ;^20  and  the  total  limit  £200.  But  Mr. 
Whitbread  lived  in  advance  of  his  time ;  the  idea 
was  feebly  praised  by  the  few,  pooh-poohed  by 
an  overwhelming  majority,  and  was  at  last  aban- 
doned. In  course  of  time,  however,  it  was 
revived,  and  put  to  more  definite  uses  by  one 
of  the  most  notable  of  all  the  labourers  in  this 
field  of  philanthropy,  Mr.  Sikes  of  Huddersfield. 
Mr.  Whitbread  had  laboured,  Mr.  Sikes  entered 
into  his  labours,  and  carried  them  forward  with 
such    pertinacity    and    unflagging    zeal    that    he 

*  On  Savinsrs  Banks  :  British  Quarterly ,]2Xi\x2iXy  1878. 


THE  SA  VINGS  QUESTION.  145 

forced  his  views  into  prominence,  and  demon- 
strated so  clearly  the  possibility  of  establishing 
successful  Government  Savings  Banks  through 
the  intervention  of  the  Money-order  department 
of  the  Post  Office,  that  there  was  no  resisting 
him  or  his  arguments.  But  Mr.  Sikes  could  not 
master  the  whole  details  of  the  scheme,  and  it 
was  reserved  for  Mr.  Chetwynd,  at  that  time  a 
staff  officer  in  the  Money-order  department  of 
the  General  Post  Office,  to  bring  his  thorough 
practical  knowledge  to  shape  the  theories  of  the 
philanthropist  into  a  compact  and  workable  form. 
Even  then  it  needed  wheel  within  wheel  to  put 
the  machinery  in  motion  ;  and  the  finishing 
strokes  and  minor  details  were  supplied  by  Mr. 
Scudamore,  the  receiver  and  accountant-general 
of  the  Post  Office.  In  building  and  launching 
this  new  ship  of  State,  it  may  be  said  that  Mr. 
Whitbread  collected  the  raw  material, — the  wood 
and  iron,  the  planks  and  the  masts;  Mr.  Sikes 
put  them  into  shape,  and  reared  the  ship  upon 
the  stocks ;  Mr.  Chetwynd  supplied  the  ropes 
and    sails,   the    rudder    and    compass ;    and    Mr. 

Scudamore   marked  out   the   vessel's   course   and 

10 


146  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

noted  in  the  chart  all  rocks  and  reefs  and 
dangerous  tides  and  eddies.' 

On  September  i6th,  1862,  the  ship  thus  built 
was  launched,  and,  in  the  language  of  a  con- 
temporary Times,  'the  country  soon  recognized 
the  universal  boon  of  a  bank  maintained  at  the 
public  expense,  secured  by  the  public  respon- 
sibility, with  the  whole  empire  for  its  capital, 
with  a  branch  in  every  town,  open  at  almost 
all  hours,  and,  more  than  all,  giving  a  fair 
amount    of   interest.* 

On  referring  to  the  last  report  of  the  Post- 
master-General, issued  in  September  1878,  we 
see  at  once  the  extraordinary  progress  that  has 
been  made  in  educating  the  people  to  save  by 
this  one  agency  alone.  During  the  sixteen  years 
that  Post  Office  Savings  Banks  have  been  in 
existence,  the  total  sum  standing  to  their  credit 
on  the  books  of  the  National  Debt  Commis- 
sioners at  the  close  of  the  year,  was  in  1862 
;^i,659,032,  and  in  1877  ;^29,7i3,529,  while  the 
number  of  depositors  in  the  old  Savings  Banks 
and  Post  Office  Savings  Banks  combined,  has 
risen  from  1,732,555  to  3,301,087. 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION.  I47 

In  1877  the  proportion  of  depositors  to  popu- 
lation was  one  to  nineteen  in  the  United  King- 
dom, or  one  to  fifteen  in  England  and  Wales,  one 
to  seventy-four  in  Scotland,  and  one  to  eighty- 
two  in  Ireland. 

A  far  greater  number  of  deposits  are  made 
in  December  and  January  than  in  any  other  time 
of  the  year.  The  largest  amount  received  in  any 
one  day  during  the  year  1877  was  on  the  31st  of 
December,  when  the  total  was  25,857,  amounting 
tO;^83,590  6s.  id.  The  average  daily  number  of 
deposits  is  10,659. 

These  statistics  will  give  our  readers  some  idea 
of  the  enormous  mass  of  business  that  is  carried 
on  in  connection  with  our  Post  Office  Savings 
Banks.  To  conduct  it  there  are  no  less  than 
493  officers  and  clerks,  of  whom  ninety  are 
women,  in  the  Central  Savings  Banks  Depart- 
ment, London,  exclusive  of  clerks  for  extra 
duty,  writers,  sorters,  messengers,  porters,  etc. ; 
and  the  total  expenses  for  working  the  whole 
of  the  vast  machinery  of  the  Post  Office  Saving? 
Bank  is  given  in  the  revenue  estimates  for  the 
year  ending  March  31st,  1878,  as  ;^  134,05 7. 


148  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

It  is  a  striking  instance  of  the  hour-hand-like 
slowness  with  which  the  British  mind  moves, 
that  so  obvious  an  anomaly  as  the  difference 
of  interest  between  the  old  trustee  Savings 
Banks  and  the  new  Post  Office  Savings  Banks 
has  never  been  removed.  As  long  ago  as  1866, 
Mr.  Lewin  writes  in  his  admirable  *  History  of 
Savings  Banks  : '  *  The  old  Savings  Banks  de- 
posit their  funds  with  Government,  and  are 
allowed  interest  on  their  money  at  the  rate  of 
£2f  5i".  per  cent.  The  Post  Office  Banks  of 
course  deposit  their  money  with  Government, 
and  are  allowed  interest  at  the  rate  of  ;^2  los. 
per  cent.  Out  of  the  15^".  per  cent,  difference 
between  the  two  rates,  an  average  of  half  of  it 
is   given   by   the   old    banks  to   their  depositors. 

*  Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  average  cost 
of  each  transaction  in  the  Post  Office  Banks  is 
little  more  than  half  the  average  cost  of  a 
transaction  in  the   ordinary  Savings  Banks.*      If 

*  The  writer  in  the  British  Quarterly  states  that  the 
average  cost  of  a  transaction  in  the  Post  Office  Savings 
Banks  during  the  whole  period  of  their  existence  has 
been  6tV^-)  as  compared  with  is,  in  the  old  Savings 
Banks. 


THE  SA  VINGS  QUESTION.  149 

Government  can  still  afford  to  pay  the  old 
Savings  Banks  the  higher  rate  of  interest,  it 
might  afford  at  the  least  computation  to  give 
\os.  per  'cent,  more  to  depositors  in  the  Post 
Office  Savings  Banks.  If  Government  cannot 
afford  to  pay  the  higher  rate,  it  ought  to  dis- 
continue its  charity,  which,  like  all  other  charit- 
able doles,  excites  discontent  among  those  who 
think  they  have,  and  really  have  the  right  de 
facto,  if  not  de  jurey  to  share  it.  That  the  rate 
should  be  equalized  in  one  way  or  the  other 
admits,  we  think,  of  little  question ;  but  that  the 
Government  should  pay  more  than  it  can  pay 
without  loss,  admits  of  less.' 

Equalize  the  rate  of  interest,  and  the  old 
trustee  Savings  Banks,  with  their  liability  to 
fraud,  and  their  greater  expense  of  manage- 
ment, would  be  quickly  absorbed  into  the  more 
economical  and  safer  system  of  the  Post  Office 
Savings  Banks.  It  has  been  calculated  that  the 
Government  might  effect  an  ultimate  saving  of 
;^28o,ocxD  by  closing  the  old  Savings  Banks  alto- 
gether. I  question  whether  any  other  civilized 
Government  but  England's  would  calmly  display 


ISO  WORIC  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

for  upwards  of  sixteen  years  such  an  anomaly  as 
a  bounty  offered  to  the  poor  out  of  the  public 
funds  to  induce  them  to  invest  their  savings  in 
a  less  perfect  security,  when  it  offers  them  a 
perfect  security  at  the  hands  of  its  own  officials 
and  at  no  loss  to  itself! 

Another  reform  which  is  urgently  needed,  and 
which  would  add  greatly  to  the  value  of  the 
Post  Office  Bank,  is  the  extension  of  the  narrow 
limit  of  the  annual  deposit.  At  present  the  de- 
positor is  limited  to  ;^30  per  annum,  and  to 
;^I50  in  all.  On  this  point  bankers  have  per- 
sistently opposed  their  selfish  interest  to  the 
public  good;  but  the  example  of  other  countries 
shows  how  little  justice  there  is  in  the  opposi- 
tion they  have  maintained  in  England.  In 
France  the  limit  is  £40  \  in  Belgium,  ;^I20;  in 
Denmark  there  is  no  limit ;  in  some  parts  of 
Prussia,  ;^i5o;  in  Switzerland,  it  varies  from  a 
very  small  sum  to  ;£"400 ;  and  in  Austria,  from 
^50  to  ;^  1,500.  If  the  statutory  limit  in  Eng- 
land were  even  raised  to  £^0,  it  would  be  a 
great  gain,  that  being  a  convenient  sum  to 
invest. 


THE  SA  VINGS  Q  UESTION.  r  5 1 

The  Post  Office  Savings  Bank  is  doing  good 
service  in  affiliating  Penny  Banks.  In  1877  no  less 
than  293  Penny  Banks  received  authority  to  in- 
vest their  funds  in  the  Post  Office  Savings  Bank, 
showing  an  increase  of  121  over  the  previous  year. 
The  establishment  of  Penny  Banks,  in  connection 
especially  with  Board  Schools,  following  the  pre- 
cedent of  a  successful  movement  first  set  on  foot 
in  Belgium,  *  is  destined,*  writes  the  Postmaster- 
General,  *  to  play  a  very  important  part  in  develop- 
ing thrift  and  saving  habits,  judging  by  the  results 
already  attained.'  As  an  example  of  the  success 
of  these  banks,  the  forty  penny  banks  in  operation 
in  the  London  Board  Schools  received  in  the  year 
ending  31st  December,  1877,  i^  deposits,  ^3,007, 
from  9,611  children.  The  remarkable  increase 
in  the  total  amount  of  deposits  in  French  savings 
banks  within  the  last  three  years,  from  ;^20,6oo,ooo 
to  ;^3 2,360,000,  though  partly  attributable  to  the 
material  prosperity  of  France,  is  supposed  to  be 
mainly  due  to  the  extraordinary  development  in 
the  three  last  years  of  penny  and  school  savings 
banks  brought  about  by  the  efforts  of  M.  Auguste 
de  Malarce. 


152  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

As  Working-Men's  Clubs  multiply,  the  esta- 
blishment of  penny  banks,  and  other  methods 
of  saving  which  are  their  invariable  adjuncts, 
will  probably  produce  a  still  more  remarkable 
increase  in  English  savings. 

But  if  the  Post  Office  Savings  Bank  has  done 
and  is  doing  so  much  to  educate  the  people  in 
those  habits  of  saving  and  thrift  which  form 
the  elementary  school  for  the  accumulation  of 
capital  in  the  hands  of  the  working-classes,  Build- 
ing Societies  have  taken  us  a  step  further,  and 
taught  the  working-man  not  only  the  value  of 
saving,  but  the  meaning  of  investment,  with  the 
potent  inducement  to  save  which  it  presents. 
Hitherto  they  have  been  the  greatest  and  most 
successful  agent  in  creating  'peasant  proprietors' 
of  capital,  with  all  that  would  spring  from  their 
wide  extension, — the  hereditary  thrift  and  sobriety, 
the  conservative  instincts  of  order,  the  better 
understanding  of  economic  laws,  the  indepen- 
dence and  power  of  holding  their  own  with- 
out having  recourse  to  the  ruinous  expedients  of 
strikes  and  unions,  necessary  adjuncts  of  'the 
freebooters  of  labour,'  and  the  increased  sense  of 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION:  153 

family  affection  and  duty  which  would  come 
with  the  sense  of  some  provision  having  been 
made  for  wife  and  family  on  the  father's  death, 
instead  of  his  savings  dying  with  him  except  a 
small  sum  for  funeral  expenses,  as  in  the  case  of 
a  benefit  club,  leaving  his  family  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  Poor  Law. 

But  might  not  the  movement  be  immensely 
helped  on  if  the  importance  of  it,  economic  and 
moral,  were  duly  recognized  ? 

Mr.  Seebohm,  who  as  a  banker  opposes  the 
extension  of  the  limits  imposed  on  the  deposits 
at  Post  Office  Savings  Banks,  contending  that 
*  they  are  only  intended  to  bring  down  the 
system  of  banking  within  reach  of  the  working- 
class,  not  to  provide  them  with  a  mode  of  per- 
manent investment  on  a  false  economical  principle, 
and  therefore  at  a  lower  rate  of  interest  than  an 
investment  on  Government  security  ought  in  th^^ 
open  market  to  receive,'  contends  at  the  same 
time  that  Government  can  aid  the  people  in 
the  permanent  investment  of  their  savings,  by 
placing  its  own  public  funds  fairly  within  their 
reach,    through    the    same    agency  of   the    Post 


154  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

Office,  which  it  has  employed  with  such  effect. 
*  It  can  do  this/  he  says,  *  by  acting  simply  as 
broker  for  the  working-classes  without  incurring 
one-tenth  part  of  the  risk  which  is  involved  in 
acting  as  their  bankers/  To  quote  his  own 
words :  *  The  deposit  of  money  by  the  working- 
classes  to  be  returned  in  money  to  them  on 
demand  involves  that  the  State  should  keep 
large  floating  balances  uninvested  to  meet  cur- 
rent demands.  Recent  experience  has  shown  how 
apt  such  balances  are  to  lie  too  long  uninvested, 
and  in  the  meantime  to  be  temporarily,  with  the 
best  intentions,  misapplied.  There  would  be  no 
such  danger  in  connexion  with  Consols.  The 
price  of  ;£"i  of  Consols  would  be  telegraphed 
from  day  to  day  to  the  various  post-offices 
and  posted  up  in  their  windows.  "  The  price  of 
£i  of  Consols  to-day  is  iZs.  6d'*  By  each  night's 
post  the  purchases  and  sales  all  over  England 
would  be  advised  to  the  head  office  in  London. 
The  difference  between  the  total  purchased  and 
the  total  sold  would  be  the  amount  which  had 
to  be  sold  or  purchased  by  the  Postmaster- 
General    on   the    next    day  on    the   Post   Office 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION.  155 

account.  The  purchases  and  sales  of  the  work- 
ing-classes would  be  matters  of  account  in  the 
books  of  the  Post  Office  Consols  department, 
and  the  whole  amount  under  investment  through 
the  Post  Office  would  stand  in  the  name  of  the 
Postmaster-General  in  the  books  of  the  Bank  of 
England.  In  the  same  way  the  dividends  on 
the  total  sum  would  be  handed  over  to  the 
Postmaster- General,  and  distributed  by  him  to 
the  several  holders.  The  Act  of  Parliament 
conferring  on  the  Postmaster-General  the  neces- 
sary powers  to  carry  out  the  object  would,  of 
course,  have  to  fix  the  limits  within  which 
transactions  were   to   be    restricted.* 

'  As  matters  stand  now  Consols  are  not  within 
reach  of  the  working-classes.  Dealings  in  Con- 
sols, through  brokers,  by  powers  of  attorney  and 
transfers  v/ith  the  addition  of  stamps  and  fees, 
are  so  surrounded  with  practical  difficulties — so 
tied  up  with  red  tape — that  they  are  practically 

*  A  brokerage  of  one  penny  in  the  pound  would  pro- 
bably pay  expenses,  and  be  a  self-acting  check  upon  the 
undue  use  of  the  Post  Office  for  too  large  sums.  The 
ordinary  brokerage  on  ;^ioo  is  only  2^.  6^. 


156  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

out  of  the  reach  of  the  working  classes  for  small 
amounts  even  in  London.  In  very  few  country- 
places  are  there  any  brokers  at  all,  and  unless  a 
working  man  has  access  to  a  banker,  he  can 
hardly  make  a  small  investment  in  Consols. 
Whereas  if  Consols  were  placed  within  easy 
reach  of  the  Post  Office  of  every  little  town, 
the  working-classes  would  invest  their  money  in 
Consols,  and  get  3J  per  cent,  with  Government 
security  as  easily  as  they  now  get  2j-  in  the  Post 
Office  Savings  Bank.' 

But  is  there  not  here  a  field  for  private  co- 
operation, as  well  as  Government  aid }  Taking 
the  rate  of  interest  given  at  the  Post  Office,  do 
we  realize  how  hard  it  would  be  for  us  to  save 
with  only  2  J  per  cent,  as  an  inducement }  There 
are  plenty  of  business  men  who  have  no  wish  to 
live  selfish  lives,  with  that  egoism  a  deux,  d  irois, 
a  quatre  which  our  family  life  so  plentifully 
supplies  us  with  ;  they  would  gladly  go  beyond 
this  narrow  circle,  and  give  some  brotherly  help 
to  the  working-men,  on  whose  service  all  the 
material  wants  of  their  own  life  rest  for  theii 
fulfilment,  if  they  knew  how.      District-visiting, 


THE  SA  VINGS  QUESTION.  157 

Sunday-school  teaching,  lecturing,  teetotalism, — 
these  are  not  in  their  line.  In  what  better  way- 
could  they  help  the  working-classes  than  in  aid- 
ing the  accumulation  of  capital  in  their  hands  ? 

*  It  is  not  perhaps  realized  by  persons  who 
wish  to  help  the  working-classes  in  their  savings,* 
writes  Mr.  Frederic  Seebohm,  in  the  article  from 
which  I  have  already  quoted,  'how  easily  by 
means  of  co-operation  any  sound  investment  may 
be  placed  within  their  reach.  A  few  well-to-do 
persons  might  place,  say  ;^  1,000  of  the  debenture 
stock  or  preference  shares  of  a  first-class  railway 
in  their  joint  names  as  trustees  of  a  co-operative 
investment  society,  and  offer  to  sell  it  to  small 
investors  at  the  market  price  of  the  day.  In 
the  ledger  of  the  society  they  would  at  first  be 
entered  as  owners  of  the  whole  amount.  As 
fast  as  investors  came  in  they  would  buy  from 
the  trustees  at  the  market  price  of  the  day  small 
portions  of  the  stock,  until  by  degrees  the  whole 
;£"i,000  was  purchased  and  transferred  into  the 
purchaser's  names  in  the  ledger.  In  the  mean- 
time the  dividends  would  be  divided  among  the 
owners,  according  to  the  amounts  of  stock  stand- 


158  WORI^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

ing  in  their  names.  With  the  exception  of  the 
small  inconvenience  of  receiving  the  purchase- 
money  in  instalments,  the  whole  transaction 
would  be  one  of  perfect  safety  to  the  original 
owners  of  the  ;^  1,000  stock,  and  at  any  time  they 
could  wind  up,  if  needful,  and  get  rid  of  further 
responsibility  by  having  the  amounts  all  trans- 
ferred into  the  names  of  the  purchasers  in  the 
books  of  the  railway  company,  retaining  the 
small  remainder,  if  any,  for  themselves.  There 
would  be  none  of  the  risk  attending  a  bank. 
The  investors  would  have  invested  in  railway 
stock  paying  4  per  cent,  or  4J  per  cent.,  instead 
of  depositing  their  money  at  a  savings  bank  at 
2j  per  cent,  or  3  per  cent.  In  larger  places, 
where  there  might  be  more  intelligence  and 
business  knowledge,  any  hundred  working-men, 
by  throwing  their  savings  together,  might  soon 
on  the  same  principle  (without  the  aid  of  others) 
make  co-operative  investments  in  any  security 
they  like,  and  in  a  few  years'  time,  when  the 
amount  of  their  individual  investments  reaches 
a  sufficient  sum,  have  their  shares  transferred 
into  their  own  names,* 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION.  159 

The  latter  suggestion  has  been  already  carried 
out  in  some  of  our  large  manufacturing  towns 
among  our  more  intelligent  artizans.  But  when 
the  intelligence  is  wanting,  I  know  of  no  more 
effective  way  of  giving  brotherly  help  than  in 
developing  a  principle  of  thrift  which,  unlike 
benefit-club  saving,  does  not  die  with  the  man, 
but,  strengthened  by  all  that  is  unselfish  in  family 
feeling,  transmits  an  hereditary  nest-egg  to  the 
next  generation. 

But  surely  one  of  the  best  and  readiest  methods 
of  educating  our  people  in  thrift  would  be  the 
establishment  of  a  co-operative  store,  not  upon 
the  degenerate  but  familiar  methods  of  London 
co-operation,  but  on  the  Rochdale  plan.  London 
co-operation  only  aims  at  saving  somewhat  the 
pockets  of  its  customers,  without  affording  them 
the  inducement  to  acquire  the  habit  of  saving 
and  the  facility  of  so  doing.  These  societies, 
organized  chiefly  to  supply  goods  at  a  cheap 
rate,  and  make  a  large  profit  for  the  share- 
holders, are  not  co-operative  in  the  complete 
sense  of  that  term,  since  the  managers  have  an 
interest  distinct  from  the  shareholders,  and  the 


i6o  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

shareholders  an  interest  distinct  from  the  pur- 
chasers. In  Mr.  George  J.  Holyoake's  words,  'The 
common  principle  of  managers,  shareholders,  and 
purchasers  is  that  of  all  competitive  commerce, — 
"each  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the  hinder- 
most  ; "  and  such  is  the  activity  of  the  devil  in 
business  that  he  commonly  does  it.  Co-operation 
on  the  Rochdale  method,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a 
concerted  arrangement  for  keeping  the  devil  out 
of  the  affair.  A  scheme  of  equity  has  no  foremost 
and  no  hindermost  for  the  devil  to  take.'  *  This 
scheme,  as  devised  by  the  '  Equitable  Pioneers ' 
of  Rochdale,  consists  in  the  profits  made  by  sales, 
instead  of  being  absorbed  by  the  few  who  are 
shareholders,  being  divided  among  all  the  mem- 
bers who  make  purchases  at  the  stores,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  amount  they  spend  there ;  the 
share  of  the  profits  coming  due  to  them  remaining 
in  the  hands  of  the  Directors  until  it  amounts  to 
^5.  Of  this  amount  they  are  registered  as  share- 
holders, and  receive  five  per  cent,  interest.  The 
store  thus  saves  their  shares  for  them,  and  they 

*  The  '  History  of  Co-operation  in  England,'  by  George 
J.  Holyoake,  vol.  ii.,  p.  136. 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION.  i6i 

become  shareholders  without  it  costing  them 
anything.  If  the  concern  fails,  they  lose  nothing  ; 
but  if  the  store  flourishes,  and  they  stick  like 
sensible  men  to  it,  they  may  save  in  the  same 
way  other  five  pounds  which  they  are  allowed 
to  draw  out  if  they  please. 

By  this  scheme  the  store  ultimately  obtains 
;^ 1 00  of  capital  from  every  twenty  members.  The 
original  capital  with  which  to  obtain  the  first 
stock  was  obtained,  in  the  case  of  the  Rochdale 
Pioneers,  now  possessing  a  capital  of  upwards  of 
;^2 54,000,  by  weekly  subscriptions  of  twopence! 
For  every  pound  so  subscribed  interest  at  the  rate 
of  5  per  cent,  was  promised,  if  the  day  of  profits 
ever  came.  Interest  was  somewhat  arbitrarily 
fixed  at  this  rate,  in  order  that  there  might  be 
the  more  profit  to  divide  among  customers,  as  a 
means  of  attracting  more  members,  and  alluring 
purchasers  to  the  store  by  the  prospect  of  a 
quarterly  dividend  of  profits  upon  their  outlay. 
Of  course  those  who  had  the  largest  families  had 
the  largest  dealings,  and  the  pleasing  and  profit- 
able illusion  was  produced,  that  the  more  they  ate, 
the  more  they  saved. 

II 


i62  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

*  In  commencing  such  a  store,'  says  Mr.  Holy- 
cake,  himself  one  of  the  bravest  and  most 
self-denying  pioneers  of  Co-operation,  and  the 
-most  thorough  master  of  its  principles,  *the  first 
thing  to  do  is  for  two  or  three  persons  to  call  a 
meeting  of  those  likely  to  care  for  the  object  in 
view  and  able  to  advance  it.  The  callers  of  the 
meeting  should  be  men  who  have  clear  notions  of 
what  they  want  to  do,  and  how  it  is  to  be  done, 
and  why  it  should  be  attempted.  Capital  for  the 
store  is  usually  provided  by  each  person  putting 
down  his  or  her  name  for  twopence,  threepence,  or 
sixpence  a  week,  or  more,  as  each  may  be  able, 
towards  the  payment  of  five  shares  of  ;^i  each. 
If  the  store  be  a  small  one,  a  hundred  members 
subscribing  a  one-pound  share  each  may  enable 
a  beginning  to  be  made.  In  a  sound  store,  each 
member  is  called  upon  to  hold  five  one-pound 
shares.  It  is  safest  for  the  members  to  subscribe 
their  own  capital.  Borrowed  money  is  a  dangerous 
thing  to  deal  with.  Interest  has  to  be  paid  often 
before  any  profits  are  made.  Sometimes  the 
lenders  become  alarmed,  and  call  it  in  suddenly, 
which  commonly  breaks   up   the   store  ;    or  the 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION'.  163 

directors  have  to  become  guarantees  for  its  repay- 
ment, and  then  the  sole  control  of  the  store  neces- 
sarily falls  into  their  hands. . . .  By  commencing  upon 
the  system  of  the  intending  co-operators  subscribing 
their  own  capital,  a  larger  number  of  members 
is  obtained,  and  all  have  an  equal  and  personal 
interest  in  the  store,  and  give  it  their  custom  that 
their  money  may  not  be  lost.  This  plan  of  divid- 
ing profits  on  purchases  secures  not  only  a  com- 
mon interest,  but  a  large  and  permanent  custom.'* 
A  secretary  and  treasurer  should  be  of  course 
appointed ;  but  perhaps  the  most  important  officers 
at  this  early  stage  of  proceedings  are  two  or  three 
energetic,  good-tempered  collectors,  who  will  go 
round  and  personally  collect  the  subscriptions 
which  are  not  brought  to  the  appointed  place 
on  the  appointed  day.  *  There  is  a  deal  of  human 
nature  in  man,'  as  Sam  Slick  says,  and  human 
nature  will  always  be  slack  in  its  stipulated  pay- 
ments, unless  screwed  up  to  the  mark  by  those 
who  have  the  cause  sufficiently  at  heart  to  bestow 
much  self-sacrificing  labour  upon  it. 

*  The  '  History  of  Co-operation  in  England,*  by  George 
J.  Holyoake^  vol.  ii.,  p.  loi. 


1 64  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN. 

If,  when  started,  the  store  goes  into  the  grocery 
business,  or  the  meat  trade,  or  tailoring,  or  shoe- 
making,  or  drapery,  it  is  apparently  not  so  hopeless 
as  at  first  sight  it  would  seem,  to  find  a  disin- 
terested friendly  grocer,  or  butcher,  or  tailor,  or 
cordwainer,  or  draper,  to  put  the  co-operators 
into  the  right  way  of  laying  in  and  selling  and 
preserving  stock.  *  Such  friendly  persons,'  Mr. 
Holyoake  assures  us,  *are  always  to  be  found  if 
looked  for.'  At  first,  it  seems,  wholesale  dealers 
were  suspicious  of  co-operators,  and  refused  to 
deal  with  them.  But  now  they  are  honoured 
customers  at  such  firms  as  Messrs.  J.  McKenzie 
of  Glasgow,  wholesale  tea-merchants ;  Messrs. 
Constable  &  Henderson  of  London,  wholesale 
sugar-dealers ;  Messrs.  Ward  &  Co.  of  Leeds, 
provision  merchants.  There  is  also  a  branch  of 
the  North  of  England's  Wholesale  open  at  1 1 8, 
Minories,  London,  which  enables  a  young  society 
to  offer  at  once  to  its  customers  goods  of  first-rate 
quality ;  in  fact,  *  to  obtain  West  End  provisions 
at  East  End  prices.' 

Mr.  Holyoake  has  also  some  wise  remarks  on 
the  necessity  of  treating  the  servanf-i,  when  once 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION,  165 

appointed,  with  confidence  and  respect,  never 
distrusting  them  on  mere  rumour  or  hearsay  or 
suspicion,  or  on  anything  short  of  actual  evidence 
of  dishonesty.  As  John  Stuart  Mill  said  to  the 
London  Co-operators,  '  Next  to  the  misfortune  to 
a  society  of  having  bad  servants,  is  to  have  good 
servants  and  not  know  it ; '  and  the  proverbial 
distrust  and  jealousy  of  one  another  among 
working  men  forms  a  very  serious  difficulty  in 
the  successful  working  of  a  co-operative  store, 
and  many  a  good  manager  has  been  led  by  it 
to  throw  up  his  work  in  despair  and  disgust. 

In  a  properly  constituted  store,  the  funds  are 
portioned  out  quarterly  in  seven  ways :  (i)  ex- 
penses of  management ;  (2)  interest  due  on  all 
loans,  if  any;  (3)  an  amount  equivalent  to  ten 
per  cent,  of  the  value  of  the  fixed  stock,  set  apart 
to  cover  its  annual  reduction  in  worth  owing  to 
wear  and  tear  ;  (4)  dividends  on  subscribed  capital 
of  the  members ;  (5)  such  sum  as  may  be  required 
for  extension  of  business  ;  (6)  two  and  a  half  per 
cent,  of  the  remaining  profit,  after  all  the  above 
items  are  provided  for,  to  be  applied  to  educational 
purposes;  (7)  the  residue,  and  that  only,  is  then 


i66  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN 

divided  among  all  the  persons  employed  and 
members  of  the  store,  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  their  wages  or  of  their  respective  purchases 
during  the  quarter,  varying  from  is.  6d,  to  2s.  6d. 
in  the  pound.* 

On  these  methods,  a  Co-operative  store,  with  its 
ready  money  payments,  its  capitalizing  of  profits 
and  its  two  and  a  half  per  cent,  on  profits  laid  by 
for  educational  purposes,  may  be  made  a  potent 
educator  of  the  people  in  the  all-important  lessons 
of  integrity,  thrift,  and  self-improvement. 

Into  the  far  deeper  questions  of  the  true  relations 
of  labour  and  capital,  whether  industry  is  as  yet 
organized  on  its  right  basis  ;  whether  the  rise  and 
spread  of  socialism  does  not  point  to  left-out 
elements  which  must  be  brought  into  our  social 
organization  before  our  industrial  problems  can  be 
solved;  whether  the  working  classes  have  at  all 
their  due  share  in  the  wealth  of  the  country,  I 
do  not  intend  to  enter,  as  it  forms  too  wide  a 
question  to  discuss  exhaustively  in  these  brief 
notes  of  work.     But  surely  these  questions  in  their 

♦  The  *  History  of  Co-operation  in  England,'  by  George 
J.  Holyoake,  pp.  104-5. 


THE  SAVINGS  QUESTION:  167 

moral  aspect  are  those  in  which  the  Christian 
Church  should  take  a  profound  interest,  and 
make  herself  a  living  voice.  Whether  the  present 
principle  of  unlimited  competition,  which  *  writ 
large'  is,  'every  man  for  himself,  and  the  devil 
take  the  hindermost,'  on  which  trade  is  based,  with 
the  inevitable  slow  deterioration  of  the  quality  of 
the  work  turned  out,  and  the  necessary  *  scamping  * 
it  leads  to,  is  the  '  good  tree '  which  is  likely  to 
bear  good  fruit ;  whether  the  conflict  between 
capital  and  labour,  and  the  selfish  antagonism  it 
leads  to  between  identical  interests,  and  the 
ruinous  industrial  waste  of  strikes,  and  bitter 
class  feeling  it  results  in,  is  in  accordance  with 
the  great  social  principle  of  Christianity,  that 
we  are  one  body,  and  only  through  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  members  for  the  good  of  the  organic 
whole  can  we  escape  from  the  social  disorders  and 
convulsions  that  must  result  from  any  schism  in  the 
body ;  whether  the  principle  on  which  retail  trade 
is  at  present  based,  of  making  the  honest  man  pay 
for  the  knave,  paying  for  the  bad  debts  caused 
by  the  one  with  the  ready  money  supplied  by  the 
other,  is  likely  to  educate  the  people  in  integrity 


1 68  WORIC  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

and  uprightness,  and  the  habit  of  paying  their 
way  instead  of  going  on  trust ;  surely  these  are 
all  vital  questions  relating  to  the  kingdom  of 
God  upon  earth,  and  which  should  not  be  left 
to  Positivists  and  Secularists  to  take  the  lead  in. 
May  it  not  be  that  modern  Christianity  is  so  full 
of  other- worldliness,  has  so  little  living  grip  of 
the  rude  forces  that  are  at  work  in  this  world, 
so  little  will  or  knowledge  to  direct  and  control, 
and  mould  them  into  the  living  forces  that  make 
for  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth, — may  it  not  be  in 
part  owing  to  this,  that  men  now-a-days  go  other- 
where than  to  church,  to  find  help  and  guidance 
in  the  real  difficulties  of  life? 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

OVERCROWDING. 

N  the  inevitable  moral  evils  of  over- 
crowding and  their  cure,  I  need  not 
dwell  at  such  length  as  I  have  done 
on  the  drinking  and  the  savings  questions,  as  the 
Acts  for  the  Improvement  of  Artizans'  Dwellings 
have  at  last  placed  the  power  of  dealing  with  it  in 
the  hands  of  municipal  authorities.  But  as  these 
Acts  must  be  very  slow  in  coming  into  operation, 
cannot  we  do  something  to  remedy,  or  at  least 
to  keep  in  check,  present  evils  ?  I  ask,  how  is  it 
possible  for  a  young  girl  to  grow  up  in  modesty 
and  decency,  when  she  has  been  in  the  habit 
of  sleeping  in  the  same  room  with  her  father,  or, 
worse  still,  her  grown-up  brother  ?  Must  not 
the  outworks  of  a  girl's  chastity  be  fatally  broken 
down   by  such  practices  ?  and  have  we  not  here- 


170  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

the  fertile  germs  of  that  immorality  which  is 
so  apt  to  gravitate  in  its  turn  into  the  still 
graver  evils,  moral  and  sanatory,  of  prostitution  ? 
How  is  it,  I  ask,  that  the  most  devoted  Sunday- 
school  teachers,  who  carefully  visit  their  children, 
never  think  of  finding  out  whether  the  conditions 
of  their  homes  are  such  as  to  make  it  possible 
for  them  to  practise  the  Christian  modesty 
and  purity  they  inculcate  ?  How  is  it  that  at 
mothers'  meetings,  professedly  intended  to  help 
women  to  a  higher  standard  and  a  better  practice 
in  their  maternal  duties,  this  care  for  their  girls' 
modesty  is  never  mentioned  ?  Too  much  stress 
cannot  be  laid  with  mothers  on  two  things, — 
decency  in  their  girls'  sleeping  arrangements,  and 
not  allowing  them  to  play  with  loose  boys  in  the 
street.  When  through  extreme  poverty,  or  over- 
crowding, there  is  inevitable  paucity  of  room, 
often  an  earnest  talk  with  the  mother  on  the 
subject,  and  a  little  friendly  contrivance,  the 
gift  of  a  curtain  or  a  screen  from  the  district 
visitor,  or  the  lady  who  holds  the  mothers' 
meeting,  would  obviate  the  worst  consequences. 
One  of  our  most  noted  temperance  speakers  stated 
to  a  friend   of  mine  that   he   was   one  of  eight 


OVERCROWDING.  171 

children,  the  mother,  a  widow  in  great  poverty, 
and  only  able  to  afford  one  bedroom.  *  It  is  mere 
nonsense/  he  said,  *to  talk  of  indecency  and 
immodesty  being  necessitated  by  want  of  room. 
My  mother  hung  up  a  curtain  right  across  the 
room,  and  the  boys  slept  on  one  side,  and  she 
and  the  girls  on  the  other ;  and  I'll  venture  to  say 
we  were  brought  up  in  as  much  modesty  and 
decency  as  richer  folk  with  a  bedroom  apart  for 
each.  The  poor,  in  the  terrible  pressure  of  exist 
ence,  necessarily  get  careless  on  these  points  ;  and 
for  what  else  was  the  higher  moral  training  which 
circumstances  have  made  possible  to  us,  given 
us  but  to  help  them  up  to  our  standard,  as  they 
in  their  turn  help  us  in  patience  and  faith  ? 
Something,  too,  might  be  done  by  reporting  any 
case  of  overcrowding,  and  by  bringing  moral 
pressure  to  bear  on  the  landlord,  through  the 
clergyman  or  some  other  influential  person.  Any 
flagrant  case  can  be  brought  under  the  power 
of  the  law  to  deal  with  it. 

Nothing,  I  think,  forms  a  much  sadder  spec- 
tacle, nothing  more  conclusively  proves  how  little 
thought  and  care  we  bestow  on  one  another,  than 


172  WORJ^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

the  way  in  which  railway  companies  and  othei 
agencies  have  been  allowed  to  sweep  away  the 
dwellings  of  the  poor  without  an  attempt  to 
furnish  them  with  any  substitute,  though  with 
the  knowledge  that  their  work  would  involve 
their  living  in  or  about  the  same  place,  with 
only  half  the  accommodation,  and  that  over- 
crowding and  bad  air  must  bring  immorality  and 
drinking  in  its  train.  When  shall  we  learn  in 
our  churches  and  chapels  that  we  are  no  more 
at  liberty  to  preach  the  laws  of  moral  health 
while  all  its  conditions  are  being  violated,  than 
we  are  to  preach  the  laws  of  physical  health 
whilst  we  stop  up  our  drains  and  empty  our 
refuse  into  the  streets  ?  How  can  our  moral 
life  be  anything  but  the  mass  of  disorder  that 
it  is  when  we  do  not  so  much  as  attempt  to 
train  the  moral  emotions  to  a  response  to  the 
most  ordinary  facts,  when  facts  that  simply  make 
moral  evil  inevitable  to  the  mass  of  men 
and  women  take  place,  and  we  do  not  so 
much  as  note  their  existence  ?  I  ask,  could 
we  solve  a  single  scientific  problem  on  the 
methods   which  we  apply  to  our  far   more   im- 


OVERCROWDING,  i73 

portant  and  complex  moral  problems?  If 
Dr.  Tyndall  had  contented  himself  with  simply 
saying  that  there  ought  to  be  no  life  in  his  solu- 
tions at  the  end  of  a  certain  period,  without 
paying  the  least  heed  to  the  conditions  to  which 
they  were  exposed  in  the  interim,  where  would 
be  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  biogenesis  ? 
And  when  I  read  that  he  performed  exactly 
960  experiments  in  sterilising  his  bottles  of  dirty 
water,  I  exclaim,  where  are  the  960  careful  ob- 
servations of  all  the  conditions  necessary  for 
sterilising  one  of  our  moral  cesspools  ?  Where 
is  the  careful  training  of  our  moral  feelings  to 
respond  to  the  facts  that  have  a  claim  on  them, 
as  Dr.  Tyndall  has  carefully  trained  his  intellect 
to  respond  to  the  facts  that  appeal  to  it,  to 
respond  with  a  nicety  of  observation  which  would 
be  an  impossibility  to  a  less  cultivated  mind  ? 
Can  there  be  anything  but  moral  confusion  and 
disaster  in  such  methods  and  such  neglect  in 
training  the  faculties  which  have  been  given  us 
to  guide  us  in  conduct,  a  neglect  which  we  should 
not  think  of  indulging  in  with  the  faculties  that 
are  given  to  us  to  guide  us  in  thought  ? 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

ANY    of    us    are    familiar    with    that 
magnificent    opening    chapter    of    De 
Tocqueville's    'Democracy/    in    which 
he  traces  the  gradual  but  irresistible  progress  of 
democracy  throughout  modern  European  history. 
He  points  out  how  the  most  contradictory  events, 
the  most   opposed  discoveries,    have   alike    mini- 
stered to  the  growth  of  the  power  of  the  people. 
The  crusades,  which  decimated  and  impoverished 
the  great    feudatory   families ;    the    invention   of 
gunpowder,   that    makes    the  common  soldier    a 
more  destructive  power  than  the  Homeric  chief; 
the  invention  of  the  printing  press,  which  placed 
knowledge    within    reach   of    the    humblest ;     in 
England  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  which  consumed 
the  nobility ;  in  France  the  policy  of  the  kings, 
which  in  alliance  with  the  people,  humbled  and 


CONCLUSION,  175 

subjected  the  nobles ;  the  Reformation,  with  its 
vindication  of  the  priesthood  and  personal  re- 
sponsibility of  every  man ; — all  alike  ministered 
to  the  silent  rise  of  democracy,  the  steady  accu- 
mulation of  power  in  the  hands  of  the  people ;  a 
process  which  is  still  silently  and  irresistibly  going 
on.  Whether  we  look  on  democracy  as  an  evil 
or  a  good,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  the  power 
of  the  people  is  the  great  inevitable  fact  of  the 
future,  and  whether  it  is  a  Christianized  fact,  a 
power  that  owns  that  obedience  to  moral  law 
which  is  the  bond  of  rule,  on  this,  in  De  Tocque- 
ville's  estimation,  depends  the  future  welfare  of 
our  race. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  look  at  Christianity 
with  unprejudiced  eyes,  we  are  struck  by  the  same 
fact,  of  which  all  European  history  is  the  evolu- 
tion, hidden  in  the  germ,  and  stored  up,  as  it  were, 
for  some  future  use,  like — 

'  the  soul  of  the  wide  world 
Dreaming  of  things  to  come.' 

It  IS  very  difficult  for  us  to  get  rid  of  all 
adventitious     associations,    the    traditions     and 


176  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN: 

ecclesiasticism  of  the  ages,  and  get  a  glimpse  of 
Christianity  as  it  came  fresh  from  the  Mind  and 
Hand  of  Christ,  and  realize  its  intensely  demo- 
cratic character.  To  many  of  us  it  seems  irreve- 
rent even  to  say  that  He,  whom  we  call  Master 
and  Lord,  was  born  in  an  outhouse,  and  had  only 
sweet-smelling  hay  for  his  first  infant  bed,  and  that 
for  thirty  of  the  three  or  four  and  thirty  years  of 
His  life,  He  was  only  known  as  a  thoughtful, 
high-minded  working-man ;  the  hands  that  raised 
the  dead,  and  were  laid  in  healing  on  the  sick, 
being  labour-hardened  palms,  brown  with  years 
of  toil.  It  is  difficult  for  us  so  to  translate  ancient 
forms  into  modern  terms  as  to  have  any  idea  oi 
the  intensely  democratic  and  levelling  character 
of  our  Lord's  teaching ;  how  He  did  not  hesitate 
to  read  an  ecclesiastical  casuist  a  lesson  in  a  story 
in  which  a  parson  and  a  deacon  are  represented 
as  only  taking  care  of  their  own  skins,  but  a  poor 
infidel  as  risking  his  life  and  spending  his  money 
to  save  another,  and  bade  the  Church  lawyer  take 
the  infidel  for  his  example  ;  how  He  informed  an 
eminent  member  of  the  religious  world  that  the 
poor  prostitute,  whose  very  touch  he  had  thou?^^  l' 


CONCLUSION,  177 

defilement,  had  gained,  through  her  depth  of  sin 
and  anguish,  a  depth  of  love  that  placed  her  far 
above  his  self-righteous  respectability;  and  how, 
on    another   occasion.    He   taught   that  a    moral 
outcast  of   society  was  nearer  to    God    than  an 
eminently  religious  man  noted  for  his   attention 
to  all  his  religious  duties ;  how  He  once  addressed 
the  religious  world  as,  *  Ye  generation  of  vipers, 
how  shall  ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell  ? '  but 
for   the    tempted,    and    sinful,   and    heavy    laden 
people,  the   poor    lost    girls,  the   social   outcasts, 
whom  we  respectable  classes  are  apt  to  call  de- 
graded wretches.  He  had  but  the  cry  of  yearning 
love, '  Come  unto  me,  ye  weary  and  heavy  laden, 
and  I  will  give   you  rest.'     Nor  is  it  altogether 
possible  for  us,  with  the  glow  of  sacred  association 
and  passion  of  adoration  that  gathers  round  the 
Christian  sacraments,  to  realize  their  true  charac- 
ter, that  dismissing  all  the  burdensome  rites  and 
ceremonies  which  have  ever  pressed  so  heavily  on 
the  people,  the  Founder  of  Christianity  took  the 
two  commonest  actions  of  life,  washing  and  eat- 
ing, and  made  them  the  symbols  of  the    awful 
and  divine,  of  the  very  indwelling  Presence  of 

12 


178  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

God  Himself;  thereby  embodying  the  teaching 
of  all  modern  science  as  to  the  mystery,  the 
wonder,  and  glory  of  even  the  natural  elements 
of  our  life,  of  the  matter  which  in  our  ignorance 
we  used  to  call  'dead,'  and  'brute,'  and  'gross,' 
and  making  the  whole  of  man's  life  sacramental, 
the  visible  sign  of  an  inward  and  divine  meaning. 
Could  we  better  realize  the  democratic  character 
of  Christianity,  its  absolute  and  unique  assertion 
of  the  dignity,  the  spiritual  priesthood  of  man  as 
man,  apart  from  all  social  and  ecclesiastical  dis- 
tinctions, its  ecclesiastically  levelling  character,  we 
should  better  understand  how  it  was  that  the 
whole  religious  world  ranged  itself  against  Jesus 
Christ ;  that  the  Primate  of  Judea  condemned 
Him  for  blasphemy,  and  the  State,  while  feebly 
endeavouring  to  protect  Him,  at  length  surren- 
dered Him  to  an  illegal  condemnation.  If  we  do 
not  go  so  far  as  M.  Renan  and  say  that  Chris- 
tianity was  the  inauguration  of  the  principles  of 
the  first  French  Revolution,  since  in  its  reverence 
for  law,  its  recognition  of  the  great  historioal 
sources  of  authority  even  when  represented  by 
bad  men,  and  its  constant  teaching  that  the  king- 


CONCLUSION.  179 

dom  of  God  is  within,  and  cannot  be  secured  by 
mere  external  means,  but  only  by  moral  methods, 
it  is  widely  opposed  to  the  violence  and  exter- 
nalism  which  has  too  often  characterised  the 
action  of  the  people,  yet  at  least  we  must  allow 
that  in  its  very  nature  it  was  the  consecration  of 
the  fact  of  democracy,  the  inauguration  of  the 
fundamental  principle  of  representative  govern- 
ment, as  opposed  to  the  Divine  right  of  kings 
and  the  inherent  rights  of  aristocracies :  '  He  that 
would  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  the  servant 
of  all/ 

If  then  we  find  Christianity  and  the  people  are 
in  a  measure  separated,  if  an  *  hospital  Saturday ' 
for  the  working-man  has  been  instituted  on  the 
plea  that  so  many  of  them  attend  neither  Chris- 
tian church  nor  chapel,  if  so  few  of  them  meet 
us  at  the  family  table  of  all  God's  children,  must 
there  not  be  some  fault  somewhere  ?  If  the  in- 
tensely democratic  character  of  Christianity  is 
such  as  I  have  pointed  out;  if  it  was  the  very 
nature  of  Christ's  religion  that  the  common  people 
heard  Him  gladly,  and  to  the  poor  the  gospel  is 
preached ;    if   some,   like   myself,   have   seen   for 


iSo  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

themselves  that  it  has  lost  none  of  its  ancient 
power  over  the  people,  it  suggests  the  grave  ques- 
tion whether  there  is  not  something  inherently- 
lacking  in  our  middle-class  Christianity  which  fails 
to  attract  the  working-man. 

I  do  not  think  anyone  much  given  to  reflect 
and  observe  can  have  worked  extensively  among 
working-men  without  being  struck  by  a  certain 
difference  of  type  which  Christianity  in  them  pre- 
sents to  the  prevailing  type  of  Christianity  among 
the  middle  classes.  Roughly  delineated,  the  great 
central  fact  of  the  Christianity  of  the  educated 
middle  classes  is  personal  salvation.  Christianity 
assumes  more  or  less  the  form  of  a  Life  Insurance 
Office,  at  which  in  return  for  a  certain  amount  of 
faith  and  goodness  you  insure  yourself  against  the 
risk  of  perdition  hereafter.  Its  two  factors  are 
God  and  the  soul ;  the  third  and  equally  necessary 
factor  in  primitive  Christianity,  the  world,  human- 
ity, is  almost  entirely  omitted,  or  comes  in  as  a 
sort  of  loose  after-thought,  as  something  whose 
claims  ought  to  be  recognised  out  of  gratitude  for 
one's  own  personal  salvation.  Fortunately  this 
feeling  is  so  strong  as  often  to  secure  the  utmost 


CONCLUSION.  l8l 

devotion,  at  least  from  individuals.  But  it  does 
not  alter  the  fact  that  our  ordinary  Christianity 
is  characterized  by  intense  individualism,  the  em- 
phatically social  and  corporate  character  of  early 
Christianity,  'the  kingdom  of  God,'  as  it  was 
called,  shrinking  to  the  narrow  limits  of  the 
individual  soul,  or  of  some  particular  ecclesiastical 
organization.  Its  strength  lies  in  beauty  of  indi- 
vidual character,  in  what  in  modern  times  would 
be  called  moral  and  spiritual  culture,  in  ancient 
phraseology  *  edification ; '  its  weakness,  in  a 
certain  unconscious  selfishness  it  engenders,  the 
not  very  lofty  ideal  of  getting  on  in  this  world 
and  the  next,  and  doing  the  best  for  yourself  in 
both ;  and  its  inherent  inability  to  work  out  any 
salvation  for  the  world.  The  rise  of  Positivism, 
or  the  service  of  humanity,  on  ground  which  was 
once  covered  by  the  full  tides  of  Christian  love, 
but  which  has  long  been  left  bare  and  unoccupied, 
I  think  points  to  the  truth  in  its  broad  outlines 
of  what  I  say. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  great  central  fact  of  the 
Christianity  of  working-men  is,  what  after  all 
must   ever  be    the    central  fact  of    Christianity 


iSa  WORIC  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

whatever  else  we  may  make  of  it,  a  life  poured 
out  for  the  good  of  others,  and  personal  salvation 
as  a  means  to  that.  The  conditions  of  their  lives, 
the  constant  service  in  which  they  live,  their 
individual  weakness,  and  the  necessity  of  com- 
bining into  some  sort  of  organization  or  body  to 
be  a  power,  makes  them  unconsciously  realize 
Christianity  under  this  form  even  in  the  teeth  of 
the  teaching  they  often  receive.  All  the  influences 
of  their  lives  are  opposed  to  individualism ;  their 
very  selfishness  is  of  a  corporate  character,  which 
requires  the  good  of  the  individual  to  be  subor- 
dinated to  the  good  of  his  class,  and  is  only 
distinctly  selfish  in  its  action  towards  other  classes. 
When  once  a  working-man  embraces  Christianity, 
remaining  as  he  often  does  very  defective  in  moral 
and  spiritual  culture,  I  have  often  been  amazed 
at  the  unconscious  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  with 
which  he  pours  himself  out  for  the  public  good. 
No  fatigue  after  his  long  day's  work,  no  excuse 
of  late  dinners  or  interrupted  home  evenings, 
interferes  with  his  undertaking  night  after  night 
some  work  to  benefit  his  fellow-men.  I  remember 
being  somewhat  perplexed  at  recognising  in  the 


CONCLUSION,  183 

midst  of  much  crude  theology  the  same  type  of 
Christianity  in  the  American  evangehst,  Moody, 
the  same  living  grasp  of  that  third  factor  *  the 
world,'  the  dutv  we  owe  those  outside  our  own 
immediate  circle,  the  same  assertion  that  the 
motto  of  every  living  Christian  is  that  of  the 
Heir-apparent,  '  I  serve ;  *  that  holiness,  as  the 
word  denotes,  is  but  spiritual  health,  and,  like 
health,  is  an  end  that  is  only  a  larger  means,  an 
end  to  be  attained  in  order  to  be  used.  My  per- 
plexity to  know  how  he  came  by  this  type  of 
Christianity  was  cut  short  on  opening  his  bio- 
graphy, and  finding  that  he  was  by  birth  and 
bringing  up  a  working-man  pure  and  simple. 

Now  if  what  I  have  said  is  true,  not  with 
regard  to  exceptional  individuals,  but  to  classes, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  middle-class  Christianity 
should  have  so  little  attraction  for  working-men. 
It  is  not  their  Christianity.  It  does  not  possess 
the  features  to  which  they  respond.  They  miss 
any  living  voice  and  guidance  in  the  difficulties 
which  the  world  presents  to  them,  any  keen 
sense  even  of  the  problems  which  they  are  often 
blunderingly   endeavouring  to  solve,   and    which 


i84  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN; 

press  so  heavily  upon  them, — problems  which,  from 
their  individual  importance  being  weaker  than 
ours,  always  take  more  or  less  a  social  form. 
They  miss  any  intelligent  sympathy,  any  real 
living  help  towards  the  solution  of  their  problems, 
and  towards  establishing  a  kingdom  of  righteous- 
ness on  the  earth, — they  miss  sacrifice  taken  as 
the  one  foundation,  the  life  poured  out  for  the 
good  of  the  world. 

But  is  it  not  possible  for  these  two  types  of 
Christianity,  each  imperfect  without  the  other, 
to  coalesce,  for  the  moral  and  spiritual  culture 
of  the  one  to  take  up  into  itself  the  service, 
the  self-devotion,  and  self-spending  of  the  other, 
and  so  from  the  broken  light  of  true  Christianity 
to  orb  into  the  perfect  *  bright  and  morning' 
star,  which  would  herald  a  new  dawn,  not  only 
for  the  working-classes,  but  for  all  classes  alike } 
Cannot  each  of  us  do  much  to  bring  in  a  fuller, 
truer  Christianity,  which  will  draw  all  men  unto 
it,  a  Christianity  that  possesses  the  three  essential 
factors,  God,  the   individual  soul,  and  the  world  } 

Those  of  us  who  have  the  care  and  training 
of   boys,   cannot    we   bring   them    up    from    the 


CONCLUSION.  i8s 

earliest  years,  not  with  the  one  idea  of  getting 
on  in  life,  and  making  money,  taking  care  to 
save  their  own  souls  if  they  can  in  the  process ; 
but  with  the  sense  that  they  were  sent  into  the 
world  for  a  purpose,  for  a  work,  not  merely 
*to  be  born  red  and  die  grey,'  but  to  leave  the 
world  a  little  the  better  for  a  noble  life  and  a 
work  well  done  ?  Cannot  we  bring  them  up  to 
realize  that  all  good  and  conscientious  work 
is  Church  work,  work  done  for  the  kingdom  of 
God, — that  the  lawyer  serves  the  Just  One,  the 
physician  fulfils  His  command,  *  Heal  the  sick,' 
the  scientific  man  reveals  Him  as  the  faithful 
and  true,  in  whom  is  no  shadow  of  variableness 
or  turning  ?  Surely  we  need  not  fall  into  that 
melancholy  confusion,  that  because  we  like  our 
work,  or  make  a  good  thing  out  of  it,  therefore 
we  do  it  for  ourselves,  and  not  for  the  world. 
This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  very  dregs  of 
asceticism,  with  all  that  is  high  and  noble  in  it 
left  out.  Man  is  so  made  for  service  that  he 
must  find  pleasure  in  his  work.  The  pleasure 
and  profit  are  thrown  in  as  the  tradesman  throws 
in   the  paper  and   the   twine  that    enfold    some 


1 86  WORJ^  AMONG   WORKING-MEN'. 

precious  thing.  But  to  say  that  the  paper  and 
twine  is  all  we  care  about  is  surely  false.  Con- 
sidering the  strength  of  the  social  instincts  in 
man,  considering  the  absolute  self-devotion  to 
the  most  unworthy  ends  which  has  been  success- 
fully inculcated,  surely  I  am  not  visionary  in 
believing  that  the  noblest  of  all  ends — the 
service  of  humanity — might  be  so  inculcated 
from  earliest  boyhood,  so  bound  up  with  the 
thought  of  God  in  the  soul,  so  fortified  by  all 
the  internal  and  external  sanctions  that  life 
affords,  that  it  might  become  the  ruling  passion, 
absorbing  into  itself  all  lower  passions,  and 
giving  those  wider  horizons  to  our  most  circum- 
scribed work  which  impart  to  all  life  something 
of  the  exhilaration  of  a  mountain  climb.  It  is 
that  our  Christianity  is  so  feeble,  so  negative,  so 
self-circumscribed,  so  peeping  and  peering,  and 
full  of  fears  for  itself,  so  wanting  in  bold  heroic 
outlines  and  strong  passions,  that  it  has  so  little 
power  over  young  men  either  in  our  own  class 
or  among  working-men. 

And   our    girls,   with    their    fair  culture,   their 
pretty    homes,    their    graceful    accomplishments 


CONCLUSION.  187 

with  their  amusements,  and  their  pleasant  excur- 
sions abroad,  or  by  the  seaside,  and  all  the 
charm  of  social  intercourse ;  with  all  the  good 
influences,  and  tender  care,  and  sheltered  purity 
which  have  surrounded  them ;  all  the  delights 
of  happy  girlhood  which  *  fetch  the  day  about 
from  sun  to  sun,  and  rock  the  year  as  in  a 
"delightsome  dream,' — cannot  we  wake  up  in  their 
hearts  the  question,  'What  right  have  I  to  all 
this  ?  what  right,  when  other  girls  as  young  and 
fair,  and  with  the  same  thought  in  their  hearts, 
that  they  can  be  young  only  once,  have  to  stand 
week  in  week  out  at  the  washtub,  or  toil  in 
crowded  factories  or  stifling  work-rooms  ? '  Can- 
not we  teach  them  what  a  young,  generous  heart 
is  so  quick  to  learn,  that  they  hold  all  their 
advantages  as  a  trust  for  those  who  have  none, 
and  that  their  lot  is  so  bright  to  enable  them 
to  let  a  little  of  its  pleasant  sunshine  flow  over 
into  some  dark  young  heart,  whose  pleasures,  the 
street  and  the  dancing  saloon,  are  even  sadder 
than  its  griefs ;  or  even  into  those  monotonous 
lives  of  toil  so  many  good  girls  are  leading  around 
them  ? 


1 83  WO/^A-  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

That  we  so  utterly  fail  to  teach  this  to  so  many 
of  our  girls,  may  it  not  be  that  we  have  forgotten 
it  in  some  measure  ourselves — forgotten  the  fact 
which  one  of  our  poets  has  so  exquisitely  ex- 
pressed for  us,  speaking  of  the  people — 

*  Our  lives  are  beautiful  thro'  drudgeries 
Of  theirs  which  left  them  rest  and  space  to  grow 
Thro'  generations  to  the  perfect  curve  ; 
Our  hair  has  got  the  gold  because  the  dust 
Of  the  world's  highways  never  soiled  the  feet 
Of  our  forefathers  ;  and  the  blue-veined  hands 
Were  moulded  to  their  tenderness  of  touch 
By  centuries  of  service  rude  and  hard.' 

Too  often  in  the  selfish  isolation  of  our  well-to-do 
homes  and  family  life,  we  do  not  recognize  that  the 
blue-veined  hands  were  thus  moulded  '  by  centuries 
of  service  rude  and  hard '  that  they  might  be  the 
whiter  and  the  tenderer  to  lift  the  poor  lost  girl 
out  of  the  mire  of  her  sins,  and  be  laid  in  healing 
touches  on  all  human  sorrow ;  that  if  through  the 
drudgeries  of  the  people  we  have  had  rest  and 
space  to  grow  to  our  full  moral  and  intellectual 
stature,  it  must  be  that  we  might  be  the  stronger 
to  help  up  the  debased  and  the  ignorant ;  that  if 
on  us  is  the  fine  gold  of  refinement  and  culture. 


CONCLUSION,  189 

through  the  leisure  purchased  for  us  by  their  toil, 
it  must  be  that  we  should  have  more  to  give,  more 
wherewith  to  enrich  their  lives  and  ours,  than  if 
we  all  were  dirty,  and  ignorant,  and  ugly,  in  back 
streets  together.  But  alas !  we  lose  sight  of  the 
relation  of  our  lives  to  other  lives ;  we  leave  out 
the  facts  which  have  determined  our  condition  in 
the  present,  and  should  shape  them  to  noble  uses 
in  the  future  ;  we  spend  our  trust  money,  regard- 
ing only  the  coin,  and  disregarding  the  trust. 
We  first  surround  ourselves  with  every  comfort 
and  refinement,  and  then  stretch  out  our  hands 
to  help  others  with  what  we  may  chance  to  have 
left,  placing  as  an  ornament  at  the  top  what 
should  be  as  a  base  at  the  foundation ;  and  then 
we  wonder  that  our  good  life  is  such  a  failure, 
that  our  Christianity  has  so  little  power  to  draw 
all  men  to  it. 

I  believe  myself  that  an  immense  movement 
is  already  setting  in  towards  a  more  organic 
Christianity,  a  Christianity  that  will  recognise 
generally  what,  thank  God,  many  individuals  have 
already  recognised,  that  we  are  members  of  one 
organic  whole,  and  that  the  limb  can  only  attain 


190  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

to  its  true  health  and  joyous  activity  by  losing 
itself  in  serving  the  whole,  in  other  words  by 
bringing  in  that  very  factor,  the  world,  humanity, 
which  we  have  left  out,  a  Christianity  which  would 
build  up  a  moral  order  on  somewhat  the  same 
methods  as  science  has  built  up  an  intellectual 
order  in  our  life,  by  training  the  moral  emotions 
to  respond  to  fact,  as  men  have  already  trained 
the  intellectual  faculties.  It  will  not  be  left 
to  Positivism  to  teach  that  we  are  each  one 
born  under  a  load  of  obligations  of  every  kind, 
obligations  to  our  predecessors,  to  our  successors, 
to  our  contemporaries  ;  that  after  our  birth  these 
obligations  increase  and  accumulate,  since  it  is 
some  time  before  we  can  render  any  service,  but 
have  to  be  supported  at  the  expense  of  others. 
Even  when  we  are  old  enough  to  take  our  place 
in  the  world,  whatever  our  work  and  whatever  oui 
success  in  that  work,  such  success  depends  in  the 
main  on  the  co-operation  of  others,  without  which 
we  should  be  left  naked  and  hungr}-,  and  home- 
less and  helpless ;  and  that  to  Hve  for  others, 
therefore,  is  for  all  of  us  a  constant  duty,  the 
rigorous   logical   consequence   of  an   indisputable 


CONCLUSION,  191 

fact,  the  fact,  viz.,  that  we  live  by  others.  I  be- 
lieve we  shall  not  leave  it  to  Positivism  to  recog- 
nize that  the  facts  of  our  life  deprive  us  of  all 
individual  rights  but  one,  the  right  to  do  our  duty, 
the  right  that  enables  us  to  do  our  appointed 
service  in  the  world.  I  believe  that  the  time  is 
coming  when  *  duty,'  not  selfish  '  rights,'  will 
become  the  watchword  of  humanity ;  and  when  a 
fuller  Christianity  will  be  able  so  to  mould  public 
opinion  that  the  man  who  lives  simply  for  his  own 
pleasure  and  amusement,  in  enjoyment  of  the 
rights  of  property,  will  be  branded  as  a  man  who 
has  lived  a  pauper  at  the  public  expense,  and  died 
without  an  attempt  to  pay  his  debts  ;  a  time  when 
it  will  be  as  much  ground  into  a  man  by  education 
and  religious  influences  that  he  has  got  to  fulfil  his 
obligations  to  humanity,  to  others,  as  it  now  is  that 
he  has  got  to  fulfil  his  obligations  to  himself  and 
to  his  own  soul.  In  one  word,  I  believe  a  Chris- 
tianity is  coming  which  will  teach  us  not  only  our 
relations  to  God,  but  our  relations  to  His  world, — 
not  only  our  relations  through  Christ  to  God,  but 
also  our  relations  through  Christ  to  humanity,  of 
whom  He  is  equally  the  representative;  a  Chris- 


192  WORK  AMONG   WORKING-MEN, 

tianity  which  will  base  itself  less  upon  theological 
dogma  and  more  upon  the  facts  of  life. 

I  can  only  earnestly  beseech  parents  not  to 
stand  in  the  way  of  this  higher  life  for  their 
children,  a  joy  which  the  world  can  neither  give 
nor  take  away.  I  would  humbly  and  earnestly 
remind  them  'whose  they  are  and  whom  they 
serve,'  even  One  who  spared  not  His  own  Son, 
but  freely  gave  Him  up  for  us  all ;  and  beseech 
them  not  to  refuse  to  give  up  their  children 
in  return  to  God.  So  far  from  really  giving 
them  up,  parents  too  often  will  not  let  their 
children  give  up  a  single  convenance  of  the  world, 
or  put  them  to  the  least  inconvenience  or  privation 
for  the  sake  of  Him  who  gave  up  His  well-beloved 
Son  to  shame  and  stripes  and  nakedness  and 
death  for  them.  Many  a  girl  would  have  thank- 
fully lived  a  less  frivolous,  objectless  life,  but  her 
parents  objected  to  her  walking  alone  to  the  place 
where  her  help  is  wanted,  not  for  fear  of  any  real 
harm  befalling  her,  as  far  more  unprotected  work- 
ing-class girls  go  safely  to  and  fro  to  their  work, 
but  simply  from  fear  of  the  world  and  what  will 
be  said.     Or  it  is  not  convenient  to  give  up  a  room 


CONCLUSION.  193 

in  the  house  where  she  might  invite  some  of  the 
poor  tempted  girls  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  be 
an  untold  blessing  to  them  as  a  friend  and  com- 
panion ;  it  would  put  the  family  out,  and  therefore 
it  is  out  of  the  question.     Or  the  girls  of  the  house 
are  not  to  take  any  evening  work,  because  they 
are  wanted  at  home  to  play  and  sing  and  look 
pretty,  or  it  would  interfere  with  the  late  dinner. 
Or   perhaps,   having  been   the  companion  of  hei 
brothers,  a  girl  feels  she  knows  more  about  boys, 
and  while  she  does  not  care  about  girls,  she  would 
thankfully   undertake   a   class   of  rough   lads,   to 
whom  she,  with  her   refinement,  her  purity,   her 
devotion,  would  be  literally  an  angel  from  heaven. 
But  service   being   scarcely  thought   of,    and   the 
world  being  with  us  early  and  late,  and  it  being 
a   received   though    unexpressed   maxim   that   no 
risk  must  be  run  for  the  kingdom  of  God,  such  a 
thing  cannot  be  heard  of  for  a  moment.     Is  there 
not  at  least  some  truth  in  James  Hinton's  sarcastic 
observation  that   'the  devil  always   comes  to  an 
Englishman  in  the  shape  of  his  wife  and  family '  ? 
From   the   very  strength   of  our  family  instincts, 
our  family  selfishness  is  the  hardest  thing  we  have 

13 


194  WORK  AMONG  WORKING-MEN, 

to  overcome.  The  hardest  thing  is  not  to  give 
up  ourselves,  but  to  give  up  our  dear  ones  to  God, 
to  let  them  run  counter  to  the  world,  and  be  talked 
about,  and  encounter  evil  and  impurity  with  only 
the  God  we  profess  to  believe  in  to  keep  them  safe 
while  they  are  about  their  Father's  business. 

Yet  what  is  the  result  of  our  thinking  that  we 
can  keep  them  safer  in  our  homes  than  God  can 
in  His  service  ?  Some  of  us  who  are  set  apart  by 
some  unconscious  influence  to  be  the  confessors  of 
our  kind  know  all  that  goes  on  in  many  of  our 
outwardly  pure  and  cultured  homes, — the  envy, 
the  jealousies,  the  spite,  the  hidden  impurity, 
which  like  a  moral  smallpox  is  ravaging  many  a 
fair  young  soul,  simply  from  want  of  any  higher 
passion  to  cast  out  and  consume  the  lower.  Were 
it  not  better  to  use  the  evils  without  to  destroy 
the  evils  within  i* — not  to  insist  on  their  living  in 
a  sheltered  dreamland,  nor  try  to 


*  build  up  about  their  soothed  sense  a  world 
That  is  not  God's,  and  wall  them  up  in  dreams, 
So  their  young  hearts  may  cease  to  beat  with  His, 
The  great  world-heart,  whose  blood  for  ever  shed 
Is  human  life,  whose  ache  is  man's  dumb  pain  ;* 


CONCLUSION.  195 

but  believing  that  God's  world  must  be  better  than 
our  dreamland,  and  will  work  out  in  them  a  better 
goodness  than  we  can,  with  bold  faith  to  send 
them  out  to  do  battle  in  it  for  the  kingdom  of 
God,  and  to  help,  to  serve,  and  to  save,  suffering 
its  mighty  forces  to  mould  them  to  heroic  shape, 
and  give  them  both  joys  and  sorrows  deeper  and 
more  blessed  than  any  we  can  give. 

May  I  not  plead  the  example  of  my  own 
father,  who,  occupying  a  prominent  position  in 
the  University,  and  in  the  world  of  science, 
which  necessarily  made  those  who  belonged  to 
him  more  or  less  conspicuous,  yet  in  a  place 
where  it  was  confessedly  more  objectionable  for 
a  girl  to  be  talked  about  than  in  any  other, 
gave  up  his  only  unmarried  daughter  to  the 
service  of  the  rough  men  about  us,  suffered  me 
to  go  alone  into  public-houses,  and  to  beat  about 
the  streets  at  night,  voluntarily  foregoing  the 
companionship  he  loved,  and  only  holding  him- 
self in  readiness  to  counsel  and  uphold  me  in 
every  difBculty  and  opposition  I  encountered  ? 
It  was  a  great  sacrifice  made  for  God,  far  greater 
than  sacrificing  himself.     But  it  brought  life  from 


196  MVI?Jir  AMONG   WORKING-MEN. 

the  dead  to  many  of  those  rough  men,  and 
Christian  influences  to  many  a  little  child  ;  it 
brought  an  untold  blessing  to  my  own  soul  ;  and 
it  has  ever  made  that  one  word  '  Father '  that 
in  which  I  can  best  utter  my  highest  love  and 
adoration.  May  I  not  plead  with  parents  to  go 
and  do  likewise  ? 

And  to  any  young  folk  who  may  read  these 
brief  notes  and  suggestions  on  work,  I  would 
say,  try  this  joyous  life  of  service.  Do  not  rush 
into  any  great  undertaking  at  first.  I  did  not 
begin  with  six  hundred  working-men,  but  with 
six  girls  of  my  own  age.  But  let  there  be  no 
bounds  to  your  devotion  and  earnestness  in 
what  you  do  undertake,  remembering  that  '  I 
can't '  is  a  lie  on  the  lips  that  repeat  '  I  believe 
in  the  Holy  Ghost.'  Pray,  and  all  things  in  the 
line  of  God's  will  shall  be  possible  to  you.  And 
don't  mind  being  in  a  fright ;  I  don't  think  any 
one  can  have  endured  greater  agonies  of  terror 
than  I  have  ;  and  a  good  thing  too,  as  it  casts 
one  more  entirely  on  God's  strength.  To  girls 
I  would  say,  if  you  are  perplexed  how  to  begin^ 
begin  as  I   did,  with  asking  six  or  seven  respect- 


CONCLUSION.  197 

able  girls,  daughters  of  washerwomen,  or  young 
dressmakers,  to  tea  on  Sunday,  to  read  your 
Bible  together  ;  don't  preach  to  them,  but  share 
your  upward  struggles  with  them,  and  get  to 
know  them  and  try  to  be  their  friend.  You  will 
find,  through  being  their  own  age,  you  can  help 
them  better  than  we  older  folk.  Or,  if  you  are 
of  a  more  adventurous  disposition,  get  together 
some  of  the  back-street  girls,  or  rough  lads,  and 
see  whether,  by  gaining  their  affections,  you 
cannot  get  them  into  shape.  Trust  me,  you 
will  find  scope  enough  for  any  amount  of  heroism 
that  may  be  in  you,  in  overcoming  your  diffi- 
culties, till  at  last  you  are  able  to  rejoice  before 
the  Eternal  with  the  joy  of  angels. 

And  years  and  years  hence,  when  you  have 
grown  old,  and  sit  with  your  faded  hands  folded 
in  the  twilight  musing  over  your  past  life,  see 
if  the  fairest,  sweetest,  most  lasting  joy  is  not 
that  early  labour  of  love  that  first  swept  you 
out  of  yourself  into  the  very  life  of  God,  which 
is  the  redemption  of  the  world. 


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